bored

1. 1
   adjective

   Restless and mildly annoyed because there is nothing to do or nothing that holds one's interest.

   By the third hour of the conference, half the audience looked bored.

   Bored employees tend to drift toward their phones instead of their work.

   Similaruninterested, restless, listless, weary

   Oppositeinterested, engaged, excited, absorbed

   Note

   A participle that has settled into a full adjective, built from bore plus -ed. It grades like other adjectives of feeling. More bored and most bored are the familiar forms, but boreder and boredest also exist, which shows how far the word has moved from the verb. It names the person who suffers, not the cause, so it sits naturally after feel and look: feeling bored, a bored look.

2. 2
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of bore.

   Engineers bored a tunnel through the hillside last spring.

   The movie had bored him long before the intermission.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty. It is the simple past (they bored a tunnel) and the participle of perfect and passive forms (it had bored him). It also covers both halves of the verb, drilling and wearying, so only context tells you which is meant. After be, the line blurs. In "the crowd was bored by the speech," the participle sits close to the adjective for restlessness.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having one or more holes extending through it.

   Sap dripped steadily from the bored trunk of the maple.

   Each bored panel was fitted with a small brass grommet.

   Similarperforated, pierced, holed

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