operose
Americanadjective
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industrious, as a person.
-
done with or involving much labor.
adjective
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laborious
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industrious; busy
Other Word Forms
- operosely adverb
- operoseness noun
Etymology
Origin of operose
First recorded in 1530–50; from Latin operōsus “busy, active,” equivalent to oper- (stem of opus ) “work” + -ōsus -ose 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Stephens called it “dry operose quackery ... mere chaff not studied from nature, and therefore worthless, never felt, and therefore useless”.
From Nature • Oct. 23, 2018
He reposes on lion skins, suggestive of swift strength, leisurely superior to operose muscularity.
From Time Magazine Archive
The girls marched past progressively tougher words, from heroine, blossom and dentifrice to operose, miscible and quadrumanous.
From Time Magazine Archive
The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil.
From Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Third series by Symonds, John Addington
The common Scots saying, on the sight of anything operose and finical, “he must have had little to do that made that!” might be put as epigraph on all the song-books of old France.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) by Stevenson, Robert Louis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
