Ask Language Log: "bored of"
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Sarah Currier asked:
Last night I was reading a beautifully written, prize-nominated novel, but was thrown out of my immersion in it by what I thought was an anachronistic bit of language. I do have a particular fingernails-down-the-blackboard reaction to "bored of" and I am convinced it is fairly recent as common usage. I am 43, grew up in New Zealand, but now live in Scotland.
This passage is set in 1960 and is between the narrator and his then elderly mother:
"She is too sincere for you," she said after a short pause.
"Sincere?"
"You will become bored of her, just as I became bored of your father".
The woman using "bored of" is also an Austrian Jew who escaped to England during WWII. So English is her second language.
I just found that really jarring, especially in such a beautifully written literary novel. My partner thinks I am mad.
I just found a small posting of yours from 2004 where you seem to be saying that "bored of" is in fact ungrammatical. What is your take on how recent it is, and when it started becoming so common that you read it in serious newspapers and in other public commentary a lot (in the UK at least)? Do you agree that the passage quoted is anachronistic?
BTW the book is Samantha Harvey's 'The Wilderness' which was nominated for the Orange Prize 2009. The passage quoted is p.12 of the British Cape paperback edition.
The LL post in question is "Bored of", 3/25/2004; also marginally relevant are two later posts, "Am I boring, or are you?", 10/20/2004, and "Etymology porn", 10/21/2004.
I do believe that the widespread use of "bored of" (rather than "bored with") is a fairly recent development, though I haven't done the research needed to prove it. In addition to Michael Rundell's observation, quoted in the earlier post, that the spread of "bored of" seems to have happened after the early-1990s collection period of the British National Corpus, I'm also encouraged in this view by the fact that OED has no examples of "bored of" among its citations, except a single example where bored is the past participle of the historically-unrelated verb bore meaning "To pierce, perforate, make a hole in or through":
a1877 KNIGHT Dict. Mech. I. 682/2 Deep-well pump, a pump specifically adapted for oil and brine wells which are bored of small diameters and to great depths.
In comparison, there are 24 citations for "bored with" in the ennui sense, e.g.
1837 Fraser's Mag. 16 640 They are sufficiently bored with the solemn noodledoms of pretension.
(A careful survey of the time course of "bored of" relative to "bored with" would be a fun Breakfast Experiment™ in cultural dynamics, using online newspaper archives and similar well-dated sources — unfortunately I don't have a spare hour this morning.)
But even if its spread is recent, it's not hard to find evidence that the "bored of" trait has been hanging around for a long time in the linguistic gene pool.
In the first place, it's a likely mutation, through childish overgeneralization of of as the default preposition for expressing adjectival arguments. Thus in Patricia Wentworth's novel The Devil's Wind, set in British India and published in 1912 (and this is not just the opinion of Google Books' metadata, which got this date right — I checked the title page), 5-year-old Miss Margaret Elizabeth Monson comes to pay a call on grown-up Helen Wilmot:
And there have probably been individual or regional pockets where adults exhibit this trait at least to some extent. Thus I found a letter from Sir Walter Scott to a Miss Edgeworth, dated 1824,which includes this passage:
So I think that Samantha Harvey can be declared innocent of anachronism — it's highly plausible that a fluent but non-native speaker of English might have over-generalized of in this case.
On the other hand, I can see that the passage is confusing for a reader who's aware of (and irked by) the modern vernacular trend towards "bored of", since her reaction suggests anachronism rather than foreignism. Perhaps Ms. Harvey was unaware of the vernacular trend when she wrote the passage in question.
[Update: More here.]
Ryan Denzer-King said,
September 17, 2009 @ 8:51 am
As someone who acquired English natively in the 80's, I was a bit thrown in reading Sarah's complaint at first. For a second I couldn't even think of an alternative to "bored of"; I'm reasonably sure it's the only construction I use with regularity, though once it came to mind I realized "bored with" is not in any way marked for me. I get 2.38M ghits for "bored of" and 3.65M for "bored with".
Milena said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:10 am
I also acquired English natively in the '80s, and would probably use 'bored of' in any sort of informal context. However, 'bored with' is not marked for me either, and actually seems to be the more 'correct' alternative, at least for use in writing – maybe because I read so many older books as a child?
Stephen said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:22 am
It seems like "bored of" is much more common in British English than in other dialects. I'm a native BrE speaker, and "bored of" sounds to me neither "ungrammatical" nor "childish". I probably wouldn't use it in a formal context, but I can't think of many formal contexts where I'd use "bored with", either.
For comparison, Google reports 95,500 hits for {"bored of work"} in the UK and 477,000 for {"tired of work"}, while for Australia it gives 4 and 298,000 respectively. (There are no hits at all for the former in New Zealand.)
[(myl) Michael Rundell Rundell notes that as of the early 1990s, when the British National Corpus collected 100 million words to document the then-current state of British English,
So there's pretty clearly been a change, over the past 30 years or so. ]
Faldone said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:33 am
I acquired English natively in the '40s. I might add "bored by". It gets 12.7M ghits. Then there's always the 1969 classic Bored of the Rings.
Amy Stoller said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:43 am
I have the same fingernails-on-the-blackboard reaction to "bored of," and would, depending on circumstances, use "bored with" (mostly) or "bored by" (occasionally). But I must say "bored of" is in common use in the US, so at this point, my reaction should probably be put down to unjustified snobbery.
Ginger Yellow said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:44 am
Using "of" seems perfectly natural to me. And, while it's obviously not the same word, Johnson's aphorism seems pertinent:
"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life"
Mr Punch said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:52 am
"Bored by" is most natural to me (US, sixtyish); "bored with" is fine, but "bored of" always sounds wrong. It seems to me that the fact that "bore" (in this sense) is used as a verb relatively rarely compared to the adjectival forms "bored" and "boring" probably contributes to the uncertainty.
Bobbie said,
September 17, 2009 @ 9:56 am
To me (a native of the US) "bored of" sounds stiff and pretentious. I cannot say that it is prevalent in Virginia where I live now, nor do I remember hearing it in New Jersey….. But now that I have said that, I will probably hear "bored of" several times in he next few days! (I wilil be listening for it!)
Ian Tindale said,
September 17, 2009 @ 10:21 am
"Bored of" sounds perfectly natural to me (London, UK – 48 and three quarters). Bored with seems a bit of a clumsy transition for the lips to negotiate – you'd say it as an emphasis, because you've taken the time to. I think there's probably a set of similar constructions that you are "of". Enamoured of, frightened of, aware of. But you wouldn't say aware with, frightened with, etc.
Mike Kelly said,
September 17, 2009 @ 10:35 am
I acquired English natively in the US, 1960s, and though I suspect I'd rarely if ever say or write (other than right now) "bored of," it doesn't sound odd to me, perhaps because my kids would use it. What does sound odd to me–has theer been Language Log discussion of this?–is my kids' use of "excited for" where I would use "excited about," e.g, "I'm excited for Thursday," "I'm excited for the game," I'm excited for having a day off." As for "bored with X" vs. "bored by," I'd use the former (I believe) only in cases in which I have become wearied by X through extended exposure or repetition; with the latter, there is no such requirement. I can be bored BY a TV show within seconds. I can't be bored WITH a TV show nearly so quickly.
mollymooly said,
September 17, 2009 @ 10:39 am
"Bored by" is different from "bored with/of": the former is a tendency, the latter a state.
"Bored of" allows for some puns with "Board of"; that said, I don't know how much such potential can serve as a "pull factor" in linguistic change.
J. W. Brewer said,
September 17, 2009 @ 10:40 am
Looking for loosely similar expressions (in the sense of being negative / pejorative), it's tired of and sick of (rather than with) but disgusted with (overwhelmingly outnumbering disgusted of in ghits, and many of the latter may be in the English "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" construction which means something different). On the other hand, fed up of is not nearly as far behind fed up with ghitwise as I would have thought.
How strong is the claim that "of" is the default preposition in constructions like this intended to be? I could see "of" being more common than any single alternative without being anywhere close to a majority (assuming one could figure out the right way to quantify this).
Laura said,
September 17, 2009 @ 10:58 am
Some anecdotal evidence to support the 'default preposition' claim: also pejorative is 'embarrassed by', and someone I know always says 'embarrassed of', as in 'he's always embarrassed of me'. Sounds weird to me though (UK, mid-20s, as is the unwitting informant).
Coby Lubliner said,
September 17, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Regardless of the history of "bored of" in English, if the person saying it in the novel is a native German speaker then it's spot on. In German it's sich von etwas langweilen, not sich mit etwas langweilen.
Craig Russell said,
September 17, 2009 @ 11:42 am
I think my first thought was the same as mollymooly's: maybe the homophonous expression "board of" as in "board of directors" has something to do with this shift. I imagine (recency illusion?) that people say and hear "board of directors" more now than in the past, and pure muscle memory (is there a more elegant linguistics term for this?) might then cause us to say "bored of" without giving it much thought—especially since it's a plausible expression on its own merit. (and it's silly to try to argue that a prepositional usage is not 'logical' or whatever anyway).
I'm pretty sure that I would say "bored with" myself, but I've spent the last five or ten minutes thinking about it so much that I'm not sure anymore. I am pretty sure that I wouldn't've batted an eyelid at seeing "bored of" in a novel (what novel is it, by the way?)
I'm now reminded of an old professor of mine who tried to insist that it's only correct to say "glad of" —that "glad for" or whatever else is 'wrong'. Whatever that means…
Craig Russell said,
September 17, 2009 @ 11:49 am
Also, here's a sign of how the Internet has changed: in the 2004 article linked at the top, "bored of it" gets 25,400 hits on Google, and "bored with it" gets 48,500. I just searched both and got 7.68 million for "bored of it" and 9.95 million for "bored with it".
Has the Internet really gotten 200-300 times bigger in the past 5.5 years, or is this due to a change in Google's search algorithm?
Acilius said,
September 17, 2009 @ 11:50 am
I suspect Cory Lubliner is onto something.
Zwicky Arnold said,
September 17, 2009 @ 11:51 am
ADS-L had some discussion, back in December 2003 and January 2004, of fed up of 'fed up with' and concerned of 'concerned with/by', and of course of bored of as well. (In May 2004, exhaust oneself of 'get tired of' came along, and I collected an example of succumbing of 'succumbing to' around that time.) Blending accounts were offered, and also accounts with the extension of the default preposition of to new contexts. It's hard to distinguish the two accounts, and it's entirely possible that innovations were sometimes made on the one basis, sometimes the other. Then, of course, the innovative variants can spread by ordinary mechanisms, including to people who have no idea of the history.
roscivs said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
I'm a little younger (<30) and learned to speak English in the US South, but "bored of" not only sounds perfectly normal to me, but "bored with" sounds a little off–like something someone with a different dialect might say. Furthermore, it seems like the only natural choice when the thing you're "bored of" is a verb rather a noun–for example, "I'm bored of playing guitar these days".
"bored of playing" gets 525k ghits, whereas "bored with playing" gets 116k. And honestly, I'm amazed that "bored with playing" has any hits at all. It strikes me as a hypercorrection rather than natural, native speech–but it obviously sounds correct to a number of people in a variety of contexts (judging from the results).
Cheryl Thornett said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
I have the same reaction to 'bored of' as A Stoller. I grew up in the US and moved to the UK in the mid 70s, but I first noticed 'bored of' at my children's primary school in Birmingham UK in the 80s and thought it was local dialect. I still haven't noticed it being used by many adults, but perhaps I don't know enough younger adults.
Jean-Sébastien Girard said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
Since it seems to have not been looked into yet, COCA has:
-"bored with": 641
-"bored by": 188
-"bored of": 43
marie-lucie said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
I learned English as a second language in the 50's and 60's and have lived mostly in an English-speaking environment (US and Canada) ever after. I learned "bored with" and don't recall anyone saying "bored of". I first encountered the words in a list of sentences that linguistics students were invited to discuss regarding their "grammaticality", some of which were non-standard and others just non-English, so I am surprised to hear about the current widespread and straightforward usage of "bored of". It makes sense that the use "of" here seems to be an extension of its use with other "psychological" adjectives.
About the quotation in the book, "bored of" is not used within the narration but only in quoting a character, so does the character in question display other perculiarities in her English?
I agree with the person above who says "bored by" is different: you might say "I am bored by reading Kant", meaning "Whenever I read Kant, I get bored", but "I am bored with reading Kant" would imply that you have recently been reading Kan and are now bored, even if you were interested to begin with.
m said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
In 1969 the Harvard Lampoon published "Bored of the Rings" a parody of J.R.R.Tolkien. FWIW
JP Villanueva said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
I'm from Seattle, late 30s, native English speaker.
I prefer "board of" to "board with," to me it sounds like a natural set along with "sick of" and "tired of."
For me:
"I'm bored of his constant talking." but: *I'm bored with his constant talking.
"I'm so board of this job." but: *I'm so bored with this job.
But now, of course, after analyzing my usage of it for the last three minutes, they're all starting to sound strange…. However, I will apologize to people whose theories my intuition does not corroborate.
For the record, I'm also one of those people who says "on accident," as in "I'm sorry, it was totally on accident." I was unaware for most of my life that "on accident" was considered non-standard, possibly native to Western North America.
Nathan Myers said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
I suppose this isn't just another case of "prepositions are slippery", if people from different places are reporting that one construction or the other seems odd. I grew up in Hawaii, and recall noticing the first time I heard "bored of". Per Coby, I wonder if its distribution matches that of germanic immigration.
Emma said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
"Miss Edgeworth" seems very likely to be Maria Edgeworth — the writer of the now sadly forgotten Harrington, in which a Christian man falls madly in love with a gorgeous Jewish woman and, uh, okay, at the end she turns out to be magically Christian, which I suppose doesn't support its further survival. He wrote Ivanhoe in response to the popularity of Harrington, actually.
As someone in her early twenties, it didn't even occur to me that "bored of" was an anachronism, but now that I think about it it sounds more marked to me than "bored with."
dw said,
September 17, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Great post. Could you cover "off of" next? It drives me nuts.
Boris said,
September 17, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
Wow, I learned English as a second language in the early nineties here in New Jersey and I have never heard that "bored of" is incorrect, and I would prefer it to "bored with". To me, with implies some sort of connection between the subject and whatever comes after with. Since bored has a negative meaning, I wouldn't expect "bored with" to exist (though I know it exists and the preference is minor enough). By my logic, "excited with" would be a more likely candidate, though it seems wrong outside of a few set expressions ("I'm excited with the prospect of…" seems almost correct)
Spell Me Jeff said,
September 17, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
FWIW, I'm a 46 year-old American who was raised by parents who took enormous pains to ensure I spoke the unaccented, normalized English we associate with formal speeches and radio broadcasts. It is impossible even to guess my place of origin from my speech. I am Vanilla Man.
When I first saw the topic of this thread, I thought, "Well, of course it's 'with' not 'of.'" But by the time I'd read half the posts, "bored of" had come to sound so natural that I came to wonder what I actually do say and what I'm actually accustomed to hearing.
I conclude that "with" is my default preposition for this concept, and that the "of" combination is readily available to me because (1) it has been frequently used in my presence by educated speakers or (2) the language somehow preferences "of" so that its utility is more flexible than I'd imagined or (most likely) a mixture of 1 and 2.
That said, I think I would more naturally say "tired of" or "sick of" to describe a general attitude toward a thing. To describe a temporary state, I typically elide the agent and simply say, "I'm bored." When I'm really irritated, I'll switch to the active voice and say, "This is boring" or even "This shit really bores me."
Ryan Denzer-King said,
September 17, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
Thinking more about it and trying out a few sample sentences, I think one of the reasons I might prefer "bored of" may be the phonological reduction of "of". I find it easier to quickly rattle off "bored of" than "bored with".
Ken Brown said,
September 17, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
Is it not common to distinguish "bored of verbing" from "bored with noun"?
Meggie Lizzie was "bored of being polite" and "bored of calling". She might not have said "bored of Miss Jones".
[(myl) This might be true, but I haven't seen any evidence. Why don't you look for some and report back?]
Alan said,
September 17, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
Like several other commenters, I'm an '80s-born native speaker of (American) English, which apparently means I came of age when the phrase was gaining currency.
"Bored of" doesn't move me to word rage; to me it's an informal, mostly spoken alternative to "bored with" — with, come to think of it, a certain British tinge. It's sort of filed in my head under "expressions British authors use to give the impression that a child is speaking." (There may be some cross-pollination here with the of/have homophony, as in "could of, should of, would of", which to my eye is the eternal and infallible indication that a British author is writing a character under the age of sixteen.)
John Laviolette said,
September 17, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
I'm another person who read the '69 classic Bored of the Rings and never saw it as ungrammatical. But, curiously, I don't think I've ever said I was "bored of" something, and can't imagine myself saying it. It sounds ungrammatical if I try to say it, but completely natural when I hear it. Is there a word for that phenomenon?
I'm more likely to say "bored with" or "bored by", and I don't really think of these as separate (state versus tendency.) But then, like many Americans, I think I'd be much more likely to transfer my feelings to the object as an intrinsic quality: "that is boring" instead of "I'm bored with/of that".
Karen said,
September 17, 2009 @ 3:19 pm
@ John Laviolette: "It sounds ungrammatical if I try to say it, but completely natural when I hear it. Is there a word for that phenomenon?"
Well-trained?
Mags said,
September 17, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
I'm a native English speaker from Ireland (30 years old), and I'm pretty sure I would *never* say "bored with". It sounds clumsy and forced to me.
I just asked my sister though, and her default is "with".
Jair said,
September 17, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
On a highly tangential note: Thank you, Language Log, for giving me the word "noodledom"
dr pepper said,
September 17, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
I agree with some of the comments above. Trying out combinations in my mind i find that while i don't really mind either preposition, i tend to have "bored of x" when x is "the", "this", or a verb, but "bored with x" otherwise.
stormboy said,
September 17, 2009 @ 4:22 pm
To add to the sample… I was born in London in the early '70s and am completely surprised to learn that my use of 'bored of' is considered non-standard by many English speakers. 'Bored with' sounds like a perfectly acceptable alternative, but I'm fairly certain I use 'bored of' far more frequently.
excited for « Dadge said,
September 17, 2009 @ 5:58 pm
[…] that there's quite a bit of variation in usage. Language Log is currently revisiting bored with/of/by and I recently spat out my cornflakes over "appreciate of", but I thought I'd […]
Richard said,
September 17, 2009 @ 6:35 pm
If you are the kind of person who believes the ludicrous logic of the claim that infinitives in English must never be split because the equivalent Latin infinitives were single indivisible words, then you'll have a hard job justifying a proscription of 'bored of'; but then logic and consistency are not the mark of the prescriptivist. Amusingly, this particular variable in English shows neatly that whole line of reasoning for the poppycock it is.
The nearest Latin equivalent for expressing 'be bored' is an impersonal verb (piget) that takes the cause/source of the boredom in the genitive case (frequently translatable, in its other use, as 'of …') if it's a noun (the infinitive is used for a verb): so Plautum piget laboris 'Plautus is bored of work.' (The person who feels the boredom appears in the accusative case, hence Plautum, in case you don't recall your school Latin.) The same construction is used for other impersonal verbs of emotion in Latin, including taedet 'be tired (of)' and pudet 'be ashamed (of)' …
As a native speaker of (? otherwise) standard southern British English, I myself use only 'bored of' and I can recall the same astonishment as others at being told that this usage is considered non-standard by many; both the people from whom I have heard reports of this stigmatisation are a generation older than me, were educated at top English public schools, and are experts in classical languages.
[(myl) I don't really understand what the relevance of Latin is here. Different languages notoriously choose different morphosyntactic constructions — different cases, different prepositions/postpositions, etc. — for expressing similar concepts, even when the languages are related and the words involved are cognate.
In this case, the picture seems to be emerging that the construction "bored of" has changed in the past few decades from a marginal role in standard English — previously used by adult native speakers at a rate at least a hundred times lower than "bored with" — to a much stronger showing, perhaps on its way to taking over completely.
Evidence is welcome to dispute this story, perhaps by showing that "bored of" was always the norm for some English-speaking sub-group. But no such evidence has emerged so far.]
ACW said,
September 17, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
If you will forgive some discursion, good Host:
Sir Walter Scott's correspondent is almost certainly Maria Edgeworth, herself a novelist of considerable repute, and perhaps worthy of rescue from the near-anonymity of being "a Miss Edgeworth".
Jane Austen read Edgeworth, and liked her enough to mention Belinda in her defense of novel-reading and writing in Chapter 5 of Northanger Abbey. This makes me feel guilty that I have not read Belinda. (A scan of the Project Gutenberg text thereof reveals that Miss Edgeworth preferred bored with. Thus my obligatory return to topic.)
Tim said,
September 17, 2009 @ 7:14 pm
I checked some logs of my instant messenger conversations, and found two instances of my own use of "bored of". Both were preceded by "get" or "got". I don't know if that means I only use it in that context, or if I just use it rarely, and the "get" forms are a coïncidence. I seem to have more often used "bored with".
Also, in reference to Mike Kelly's comment, I've only seen the phrase "excited for" used in a couple works by cartoonist Kate Beaton (specifically, here and here). I had assumed that it was intentionally weird. It stuck with me after I first saw it, so I'm sure I would have noticed if I had heard it anywhere else since then. I had no idea there were people using it in everyday conversation.
Tim said,
September 17, 2009 @ 7:20 pm
Addendum to my previous comment : Apparently, I have seen the phrase "excited for" in the past without noticing it, and Google seems to suggest that people use it all the time. So, probably go ahead and ignore me.
Stuart said,
September 18, 2009 @ 12:00 am
I'm a 42-yr old native NZE speaker and "bored with" is my first choice and preference, although I do not share Ms. Currier's visceral reaction to "bored of". "bored of" always makes me think the person using it is an AmE speaker.
zuckerschnecke said,
September 18, 2009 @ 3:56 am
Coby Lubliner: Your point stands but your example is wrong. Sich langweilen doesn't allow such a prepositional clause. X langweilt mich or Ich bin von X gelangweilt, but not *Ich langweile mich von X. (Except when X = früh bis spät.)
Jim said,
September 18, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
Myself, I draw a subtle meaning difference between "bored with" and "bored of". "Bored with" implies an activity, something which one was formerly engaged with (and potentially could be again) — "bored with these games" might imply that other games would be good or that after a rest, these games would be fine again. "Bored of" implies a state of being, where the boredom is more pervasive — "bored of these games" really puts down these (and maybe all) games as something that should be stopped and never returned to.
Putting a person into the mix also differentiates things for me: "I'm bored with him" means "he can go for now", while "I'm bored of him" means "he can go now and stay gone".
GrosMinet said,
September 18, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
@zuckerschnecke: Thanks for putting this straight. I am a native German admiring the English language in the humble "the audience is listening" mode.
Nevertheless, the comment by Coby Lubliner made me wonder about my most likely limited comprehension of my mother-tongue. I am not aware of an adequate Englidsh idiom to "Da rollten sich mir die Fußnägel auf", but this was my imediate gut-feeling.
Richard said,
September 20, 2009 @ 11:57 am
(myl) I don't really understand what the relevance of Latin is here. …
The irrelevance of Latin (to making coherent linguistic prescriptions) was basically my point, addressing the question of some people's pre-/proscription of the ‘bored with/of’ variants in the context of a wider approach to prescriptivist claims which do sometimes claim that Latin is relevant.
In a nutshell: some (other) prescriptivist claims are justified on the basis of spurious Latin parallels (such as not splitting infinitives); I was pointing out that this example shows that prescriptivists grant themselves the privilege of picking and choosing what to prescribe and how to justify it without requiring any consistency or logic in either respect. In this case too, they could appeal to a Latin parallel, but to do so would support the variant that they want to stigmatise and so they don't. If their approach to justification (i.e. that Latin is in some way superior, which is why we should not split infinitives) were consistent and objectively acceptable, then they should on the same basis prescribe 'bored of'; but that doesn't fit their prejudice (which has nothing to do with Latin, whatever they pretend, and quite a lot to do with wanting to resist language change). This demonstrates how utterly spurious – verging on bogus and/or dishonest – that (approach to) justification is.
Pez said,
September 21, 2009 @ 6:51 am
"Bored of" seems natural to me (19, Aus). And this post reminded me of a website that was quite popular in high school… boredofstudies.com, parodying the offical boardofstudies.com.
George said,
September 22, 2009 @ 5:24 am
I suspect that the distinction Jim draws between "bored wiith" and "bored of" (September 18, 2009 @ 3:49 pm) is a personal one. Some other posters have made similar (if different) distinctions – referring to verbs vs. nouns, the use or not of "get", etc.) and I (Irish, born in the 1960s) suspect that they are equally personal.
Sarah Currier said,
September 25, 2009 @ 5:26 am
Crikey! I had *no idea* until this morning that I'd sparked such a great blog post and such an enthusiastic discussion. Thanks very much Mark for making this language-lover feel like a star for a day!
I am choosing to conclude that I was correct that it was probably anachronistic and/or out of character for that character in that novel to use "bored of".
I also need to accept that I can't turn back the tide; clearly, in the past 10-20 years "bored of" has become common and is increasingly being accepted, so I will need to keep my flinches to myself when I hear or read it. I don't want to be like one of those people who still becomes irate about the change in the meaning of "gay" because it used to be such a happy word.
I am, however, heartened to know that I am not entirely alone in my reaction. And I also despair at "off of" and all the other new uses of "of". It does sound childish to me, which I think is why it irritates me so; I have wider problems with the increasing infantilisation of society.
I must finish by stating that my partner (who didn't have sight of that email) says that she did not think I was "mad", and that she is happy to learn something new about the language. So a little relationship harmony is restored.
Helen Kent said,
October 12, 2009 @ 11:01 am
Finding this has really cheered me up. I thought I was a lone voice as I am forever going on about the use of 'bored of', it just does not sound correct. I only noticed it originally when m children (now 23 and 24) kept saying it and I persisted in corecting them. Whilst I may have to now bow to common usage I finally feel somewhat justified in being a nag about it!!!!!
Caroline Scott said,
October 14, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
Shouldn't that be "…thrown outwith my immersion in it…"?
;-)
Tom said,
April 6, 2010 @ 2:56 pm
I'm months late in finding this fascinating post and somewhat wary of treading on erudite toes but I have to confess I have the same reaction to Sarah – the expression "bored of" still leaves me very uncomfortable.
I was born in the UK in 1949 and mostly resident there ever since. Even during a couple of years at a school in Washington DC in the '50s I was a consistent hearer and user of "bored with" when attempting to be a louche 7 year old. When at university in a county east of London I was rarely bored – but again never heard "bored of" from fellow students. What I did hear elsewhere in that part of the UK was "bored wiv" and it was easy to hear even this degenerate into " bored [oe]v" in rapid speech. Try it.
So I suppose it is unsurprising that the general trend is to see more written usage of "bored of", particularly with the much greater opportunities that the internet gives for wide dissemination of informal written material. What is clear is that whether in novels or newspapers, this expression is no longer a BrE exception but, to my perception, increasingly the norm, though less so in the north of England and Scotland(where I now live) than in the south east of England. It still hurts my instincts to hear it or read it but I suspect that a respondent in a different post has it right when he ventures the opinion that the usage will find its official place in the OED and other authoritative publications soon enough
Norman Birt said,
January 3, 2014 @ 9:44 am
Saying or writing 'bored of' results from not having been taught English by a literate and persuasive English teacher.I was lucky enough to have as my English teacher a true scholar and enthusiast who was a gifted communicator and was a man whom I was able to admire.
It's not logically possible to be bored 'of' anything.One is bored by or with things.This appears to me to be self-evident.
I taught English in schools and colleges until the early nineteen nineties. I think I know something about the subject and I have qualifications to back up my opinion.
I blame my fellow teachers and their successors for their ignorance in many instances and in some cases for their failure to correct pupils who are there to learn.If pupils don't want to learn that's their decision, but they should be offered the chance.
He who rejects instruction despises his own soul.