1. That causes weariness; that tires one’s endurance or patience.
c. 1454. Pecock, Folewer, 15. Maters … which ellis schulde haue be to hem ouyr hard and ouer weriful to be vndirstonde.
1482. Monk of Evesham (Arb.), 82. Yef y schulde … declare synglerly the peynys and tormentys of euery syngler cryme … hit wulde be ouer teduse and weriful to the redder therof.
1591. R. Turnbull, St. James, 51. That we … with inuincible fortitude and pacience, may finish our wearifull pilgrimage in his feare, religion and seruice.
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Weariful, tiresome; giving exercise to patience. Ex. ‘I have had a weariful bout of it.’
1826. Galt, Last of Lairds, i. 8. O that wearyfu’ jaunt to Embro’ to see the King!
1846. G. S. Faber, Lett. Tractar. Secess., 194. So proceeds the Professor through ten weariful pages.
1849. C. Brontë, Shirley, vi. This foreign style of darning … was done stitch by stitch, so as exactly to imitate the fabric of the stocking itself; a wearifu’ process.
1886. Symonds, Renaiss. It., Cath. React. (1898), VII. xiii. 210. Visions of dreary wanderings through weariful saloons.
1912. W. S. Blunt, Land War in Ireland, ix. 339. We had twenty weariful Irish miles before us.
b. of a person. Sc.
a. 1700. Gaberlunzie-Man, vii. The weirifou’ Gaberlunzie-man.
1882. Stevenson, Fam. Stud. (1888), 299. She was a religious hypochondriac, a very weariful woman.
c. of the weather. Chiefly Sc.
1872. J. Payne, Songs of Life & Death, 224. Wearyful winter is gone at last.
1874. R. Tyrwhitt, Sketch. Club, 223. Spite of gray winter and weariful weather.
1894. A. Reid, Sangs o’ the Heatherland, 48. The wearifu’ snaw, O, the wearifu’ snaw!
2. Full of weariness; utterly fatigued. Of a person: Languid or affecting languor. Of a look, sigh, smile: Exhibiting or expressing weariness.
1862. Matilda B. Edwards, John & I, xxiv. (1876), 323. He lay still for some time with a weariful smile upon his lips.
1880. G. Macdonald, Diary Old Soul, Feb., 25. And the thought-spirit, weariful and wan,… Sinks moveless.
1880. Jefferies, Greene Ferne Farm, 209. The wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning.
1885. Jean Ingelow, Sleep of Sigismund, 8. His weird is on him to grope in the dark with endless Weariful feet for a goal that shifteth still.
1891. Meredith, One of our Conq., xxviii. Colney cast a weariful look backward.
1899. Crockett, Kit Kennedy, 9. Lilias sighed the long, weariful sigh of hope deferred.
Hence Wearifully adv., Wearifulness.
1838. Lett. fr. Madras (1843), 226. I quite dread to hear the subject mentioned, for fear of a quarrel, besides the wearifulness.
1885. Meredith, Diana, iv. There was a strange interjection, as to the wearifulness of constantly wandering.
1888. Black, In Far Lochaber, xxiii. The long night passed, slowly and wearifully.
1907. C. G. Harper, Rural Nooks, 14. The blurred lights of the streets and shops going weirdly and wearifully by.
