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{{g}} | {{g}}Describes any activity which, when you stand back and look at it, serves no [[Substance|real purpose]], however ''[[form]]ally'' emollient it may feel. | ||
===A short, tedious history.=== | If, as a young clerk, re-dating a stack of trust deeds at 3 in the morning after a bished execution<ref>You may think this may have the searing scar of verisimilitude about it.</ref>, you have ever regarded the clock, shaken your head and asked yourself “is there really no better way to do this?” then you have looked into the tedial abyss. [[Abyss|Careful, lest it looks back into you]]. | ||
===A short, [[tedious]] history.=== | |||
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tedious Merriam Webster] is amusing on the etymology: | [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tedious Merriam Webster] is amusing on the etymology: | ||
::''Words frequently change their meanings, and some even will go from meaning one thing to meaning something almost opposite (such as “nice”, which in its earliest use meant “lewd, wanton, dissolute”). [[Tedious]] is not one of these words; its meanings may have shifted over the centuries, but they have always had something to do with irksome, boring, or overlong things. The word comes from the Latin ''taedēre'', meaning “to disgust or weary.” Tedious has been in use since the 15th century and has been included in hundreds of dictionaries, although perhaps none have rendered so poetic and succinct a definition as Nathaniel Bailey’s entry in his 1756 New Universal Etymological English Dictionary: “Wearisome by continuance.”'' | ::''Words frequently change their meanings, and some even will go from meaning one thing to meaning something almost opposite (such as “nice”, which in its earliest use meant “lewd, wanton, dissolute”). [[Tedious]] is not one of these words; its meanings may have shifted over the centuries, but they have always had something to do with irksome, boring, or overlong things. The word comes from the Latin ''taedēre'', meaning “to disgust or weary.” Tedious has been in use since the 15th century and has been included in hundreds of dictionaries, although perhaps none have rendered so poetic and succinct a definition as Nathaniel Bailey’s entry in his 1756 New Universal Etymological English Dictionary: “Wearisome by continuance.”'' | ||