Operose: meaning, pronunciation and examples
Operose adjective. Involving or showing great effort; laborious.
How to say it
OP-uh-rohss/ˈɒpərəʊs/
3 syllables, stressed on the first (OP).
Operose in a sentence
Copying the whole archive by hand was an operose task that took the monks a decade.
His prose is operose: you can feel him sweating over every clause.
Similar and opposite
Similar:
- laborious
- toilsome
- painstaking
- arduous
Opposite:
- effortless
- easy
Where operose comes from
From Latin operosus, laborious, from opus, work.
Test yourself
Which word fills the gap?
His prose is _____: you can feel him sweating over every clause.
- gainful
- sedentary
- operose
Show the answer
operose: His prose is operose: you can feel him sweating over every clause.