All 3 Uses of
tedious
in
A Prayer for Owen Meany
- Indeed, not only had Owen and I quit the team—and that infernal game—forever; other members of our Little League team had used the upsetting incident as a means to get out of a tedious obligation that had been much more their parents' notion of something that was "good for them" than it had ever been their sport of choice.†
p. 130.5tedious = boring or monotonous
- The townspeople enjoyed them in the manner that only people from small towns—who know how everyone's apron is tied, and by whom—can enjoy tedious eccentrics.†
p. 245.5 *
- The Dowlings were tedious, their eccentricity was flawed and made small by the utter predictability of their highly selective passions; yet they were a fixture of The Gravesend Players that provided constant, if familiar, entertainment.†
p. 245.6
Definitions:
-
(1)
(tedious) boring -- especially because something goes on too long or without variation
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, tedious can mean "long and slow" or "progressing very slowly" without any implication of being dull or boring.