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''burthen'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260714000159-00-⌔

burthen - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

burthen (plural burthens)

  • Archaic form of burden.
    • ✤ Nor less, I trust,
      To them I may have owed another gift,
      Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
      In which the burthen of the mystery,
      In which the heavy and the weary weight
      Of all this unintelligible world,
      Is lightened:      1
    • ✤ It was with a daughter of Mr Shepherd, who had returned, after an unprosperous marriage, to her father’s house, with the additional burthen of two children.2
    • ✤ In some cases the conquering state contented itself with imposing a tribute on the vanquished: who, being, in consideration of that burthen, freed from the expense and trouble of their own military and naval protection, might enjoy under it a considerable share of economical prosperity, […]3
    • ✤ Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
      […] though the worst
      Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst      4
    • (obsolete or historical, nautical) The tonnage of a ship based on the number of tuns of wine that it could carry in its holds.
      • ✤ It was a vessel of about seventy tons burthen, and shaped something like a Chinese junk.5
      • ✤ […] and thence to Calstock, a town on the Tamar, which is washed by the sea flowing through Plymouth Sound and Hamoaze, and which place vessels of 200 tons burthen can reach at spring tides—[…].6
    • Rarely used musical tempo, meaning slow and ponderous (e.g., moving under a burden); similar to largo.
    • A section of music with the tempo mark burthen.

Verb

burthen (third-person singular simple present burthens, present participle burthening, simple past and past participle burthened)

  • Archaic form of burden.
    • ✤ he other men were variously burthened; some carrying picks and shovels – for that had been the very first necessary they brought ashore from the Hispaniola – others laden with pork, bread, and brandy for the midday meal.7

Etymology

Old form of burden. Compare similar development in murder.

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: /ˈbɝðn̩/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈbɜːðn̩/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ðən

Printed 2026-07-14.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1798, William Wordsworth, Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 36–43: ↩

  2. 1817 (date written), [Jane Austen], Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume, London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1848, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. […], volume I, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], →OCLC, book I (Production), page 19: ↩

  4. c. 1860, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Husbandsmen, lines 4, 6-7: ↩

  5. 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 160: ↩

  6. 1940 December, Charles E. Lee, “The Wenford Mineral Line”, in Railway Magazine, pages 647, from the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, October 3, 1834: ↩

  7. 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC: ↩

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