[f. WEAR v.1 + -ING2.]
1. Exhausting, tiring; enfeebling by continued strain or irritation. Also wearing-out.
1811. Lady Granville, Lett. (1894), I. 20. I have been prevented writing by most wearing nervous headaches.
1815. Chalmers, in Hanna, Life (1851), II. 18. A heartless, hard driving, distracting, and wearing out life among the bustle of unministerial work.
1824. Susan Ferrier, Inher., xl. She … remarked, what a wearing-out thing it [reading aloud] was for the reader.
1837. Carlyle, New Lett. (1904), I. 55. My toil is great; but it is not a wearing toil, as that of writing is.
1859. J. Bright, Sp. India, 1 Aug. (1876), 50. This wearing exasperating question of how money is to be got.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., III. xvi. You see the occupations of the day are sometimes a little wearing.
1876. Hardy, Ethelberta, xx. She began to know how wearing were miserable days, and how much more wearing were miserable nights.
1887. Emily Lawless, in Murray’s Mag., II. Aug., 267. That it was in many respects a wearing life, for Lady Eleanor especially, there could be no question.
2. That gradually destroys, diminishes or impairs by continued use or attrition.
1859. R. Hunt, Guide Mus. Pract. Geol. (ed. 2), 292. The specimens exhibited show the wearing and grinding force of the modern glaciers.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Deronda, xxxv. This cloister was built of harder stone than the church, and had been in greater safety from the wearing weather.
1903. W. Chrystal, Kingdom of Kippen, 146. All the lower ground is covered with sheets of boulder clay, the material resulting from the wearing action of the ice.
3. That is undergoing wear, diminution or impairment by continued use or attrition.
1908. Animal Managem. (War Office), 36. The surface [of the tooth] which bites on the food or its fellow in the opposite jaw is the table, or wearing surface.
Hence Wearingly adv.
1870. Public Opinion, 6 Aug., 170. It is the trivial, every-day suffering … that is most wearingly, if not most keenly, felt.
