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## THE USAGE PANEL

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bore 1 (bôr) Share: Tweet v. bored, bor·ing, bores v.tr. 1. To make a hole in or through, with or as if with a drill. 2. To form (a tunnel, for example) by drilling, digging, or burrowing. v.intr. 1. To make a hole in or through something with or as if with a drill: "three types of protein that enable the cells to bore in and out of blood vessels" (Elisabeth Rosenthal). 2. To proceed or advance steadily or laboriously: a destroyer boring through heavy seas. n. 1. A hole or passage made by or as if by use of a drill. 2. A hollow, usually cylindrical chamber or barrel, as of a firearm. 3. The interior diameter of a hole, tube, or cylinder. 4. The caliber of a firearm. 5. A drilling tool. [Middle English boren, from Old English borian.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

bore 2 (bôr) Share: Tweet tr.v. bored, bor·ing, bores To make weary by being dull, repetitive, or tedious: The movie bored us. n. One that is wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious. [Origin unknown.] Usage Note: If an activity or experience starts to bore you, are you bored by it, bored of it, or bored with it? All three constructions are common in informal writing and speech, but they enjoy different degrees of acceptance. The most widely approved wordings are bored with and bored by. In our 2012 survey, the sentences I'm getting bored with this lecture series and I'm getting bored by this lecture series were accepted by 93 percent and 88 percent of our Usage Panel, respectively. By contrast, only 24 percent of the Panelists found I'm getting bored of this lecture series at least somewhat acceptable. Why is the bored of construction so widely condemned, when tired of, on which it is presumably modeled, is universally accepted? Probably because tired of was grandfathered into our language, as a relic of the once-common use of of in passive-voice constructions (in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, for instance, Benedict describes himself as being "loved of all ladies"—that is, loved by them). By the time bore came into English in the late 1800s, the use of of to indicate the agent in passive constructions was uncommon. People have kept using such pre-existent familiar phrasings as tired of and frightened of, but otherwise the passive-agent use of of is mostly defunct, so the phrasing bored of is likely to seem like an error to many readers.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

bore 3 (bôr) Share: Tweet n. See tidal bore. [Middle English bare, wave, from Old Norse bāra; see bher-1 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

bore 4 (bôr) Share: Tweet v. Past tense of bear1.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

# Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

Indo-European Roots

Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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