irksome
/ˈɜɹksəm/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.33 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Marked by irritation or annoyance; disagreeable; troublesome by reason of long continuance or repetition
Example Sentences
- "He has this irksome habit of racing up to red lights, so he has to brake heavily."
- "The young Spaniard had been in many situations of greater difficulty, but in none more irksome."
- "But winter can also be judged by the prominence of another scourge, one that is especially irksome in a city that places a premium on being well-groomed and immaculately coiffed: hat hair."
- "Like the irksome climate-change satire Don’t Look Up, directed by Succession executive producer Adam McKay, the exaggerated hijinks of Mountainhead reveal a deep self-assurance of its politics that border on smug."
Etymology
From Middle English irkesome, irksum, equivalent to irk + -some, or perhaps continuing (in altered form) from Old English weorcsum (“painful, hurtful”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *werǵ-, irkesome, weorcsum
Inflected Forms
more irksome (comparative)
most irksome (superlative)