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What is the Difference Between onerous, burdensome, oppressive?
Not to go too heavy on the etymology, but the story behind onerous is at once straightforward and, dare we say, poetic. But perhaps that’s putting the cart before the horse. Onerous rolled into the English language during the 14th century, via Middle French, from the Latin adjective onerosus, "burdensome." That word, in turn, was hitched to the noun onus, meaning "burden" (source too of our word onus, which usually refers to a burden or responsibility). Onus shares an ancient root with the Sanskrit word anas, meaning "cart." So although onerous stresses a sense of laboriousness and often figurative heaviness (especially because something is distasteful, e.g. "the onerous task of cleaning up the mess"), it has a deep connection with a literal weight borne by a person, horse, or other beast of burden.
Examples of onerous in a Sentence
Sharon Begley, Newsweek, 23 June 2008
The first hitch occurred when the state education department took a full six months after the new law was adopted to issue 12 pages of onerous rules and regulations governing Arkansas charter schools.
—Wendy Cole, Time, 10 June 2000
Environmentalism poses stark issues of survival, for humankind and for all those other tribes of creatures over which we have exercised our onerous dominion.
—Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam, 1998
Rap tested well, but early on the promoters said they wouldn't be booking any gangsta rap, a move at least partly designed to calm security concerns during the onerous process of complying with the strict mass-gathering laws enacted in the wake of the 1969 festival.
—John Milward, Rolling Stone, 11 Aug. 1994
The government imposed onerous taxes on imports.
had the onerous and stressful job of notifying the families of soldiers killed in action
Megan C. Reynolds, Time, 27 June 2025
But the attack on Iran has made those old sticking points — such as the U.S. negotiating team’s demand that North Korea submit a full list of its nuclear sites — even more onerous, said Lee Byong-chul, a nonproliferation expert who has served under two South Korean administrations.
—Max Kim, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2025
Sterilizing bottles in a giant pot of boiling water is an onerous process, one that few parents of young babies want to undertake at the end of a long day.
—Olivia Campbell, Parents, 24 June 2025
In addition to requiring an onerous 12-week run, the terms of the distribution deal gave Universal 90 percent of the box office revenue.
—Nick Woltman, Twin Cities, 20 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for onerous
Cite this Entry
“Onerous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/onerous. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.
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onerous
adjective
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