Burdened

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Carrying an oppressive weight due to responsibilities or challenges is often mentally or physically taxing
2. Feeling the strain of heavy responsibilities or difficulties can lead to significant emotional or physical stress
3. Having to support a heavy weight, either physically or metaphorically, which causes difficulty or hardship

Etymology: "Burdened" is the past participle of "burden," and the verb descends from an Old English noun meaning a load carried on the back. The word's ancestry reaches back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to carry, bear," the same root that gave the sense of bearing a weight long before anyone was bearing a worry. English also has a second, unrelated source for "burden." Middle English "burdoun" meant an accompaniment, especially the drone of a bagpipe or the repeated refrain of a song, borrowed from Old French "bordon," meaning drone. That musical sense is the origin of the "burden" of a song, the line that keeps coming back, and it ended up as a doublet of "bourdon," the deep bass pipe of an organ. Readers who only know the physical load are probably surprised that a word about heaviness once named a humming note.

Synonyms: loaded, weighed down

Antonyms: lightened, unburdened