burden.
A heavy load.
Meaning & usage
A heavy load.
A responsibility, onus.
A cause of worry; that which is grievous, wearisome, or oppressive.
The capacity of a vessel, or the weight of cargo that she will carry.
a ship of a hundred tons burden
The tops or heads of stream-work which lie over the stream of tin.
The proportion of ore and flux to fuel, in the charge of a blast furnace.
A fixed quantity of certain commodities.
A burden of gad steel is 120 pounds.
A birth.
… that bore thee at a burden two fair sons.
The total amount of toxins, parasites, cancer cells, plaque or similar present in an organism.
The distance between rows of blastholes parallel to the major free face (i.e. face of the excavation)
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle English birthene, birthen, birden, from Old English byrden, byrþen, from Proto-West Germanic *burþini, from *burþī, from Proto-Germanic *burþį̄, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to carry, bear”).
To encumber with a burden.
to burden a nation with taxes
To impose, as a load or burden; to lay or place as a burden (something heavy or objectionable).
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle English birthene, birthen, birden, from Old English byrden, byrþen, from Proto-West Germanic *burþini, from *burþī, from Proto-Germanic *burþį̄, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to carry, bear”).
A phrase or theme that recurs at the end of each verse in a folk song or ballad.
The drone of a bagpipe.
A theme, a core idea.
the burden of the argument
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle English burdoun (“accompaniment”), from Old French bordon (“drone”), from Medieval Latin burdō. Doublet of bourdon.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.