Irksome

//ˈɜɹksəm// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Marked by irritation or annoyance; disagreeable; troublesome by reason of long continuance or repetition

    "He has this irksome habit of racing up to red lights, so he has to brake heavily."

Adjective
  1. 1
    so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
aggravatingannoyingannoyingbackbreakingbesettingboresome

Example

More examples

"But when once she had settled in her mind that life was irksome she had no patience with her condition, and longed to do something of real interest and to pass her days in ways hitherto undreamed of by forest nymphs."

Etymology

From Middle English irkesome, irksum, equivalent to irk + -some, or perhaps continuing (in altered form) from Old English weorcsum (“painful, hurtful”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.