Operose
adj ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Of a person: busy, industrious, or painstaking. archaic
"When this operose and hard-working student descended from his closet, and gained a sort of tacit leave from his tutor to join in the circle of us gay and high-spirited fellows, the part he played was no more advantageous to him, than his former exhibition had been among the learned."
- 2 Made with or requiring a lot of labour; painstaking, laborious. archaic
"Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operoſe machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body […]"
- 3 Tedious, wearisome. archaic
"when there was so great reason to make it common, since the square letters are less operose, more expedite and facile, then the Samaritan, which is, when time serves, used as a plea for their great Antiquity."
- 1 characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort wordnet
Example
More examples"When this operose and hard-working student descended from his closet, and gained a sort of tacit leave from his tutor to join in the circle of us gay and high-spirited fellows, the part he played was no more advantageous to him, than his former exhibition had been among the learned."
Etymology
From Latin operōsus.
More for "operose"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.