HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY
To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.
Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.
THE USAGE PANEL
The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP
The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG
The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.
INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?
Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com
n. 1. Something that is carried. 2. a. Something that is emotionally difficult to bear. b. A source of great worry or stress; weight: The burden of economic sacrifice rests on the workers of the plant. 3. A responsibility or duty: The burden of organizing the campaign fell to me. 4. A principal or recurring idea; a theme: "The burden of what he said was to defend enthusiastically the conservative aristocracy" (J.A. Froude). 5. Music a. A drone, as of a bagpipe or pedal point. b. Archaic The chorus or refrain of a composition. c. Archaic The bass accompaniment to a song. 6. Nautical a. The amount of cargo that a vessel can carry. b. The weight of the cargo carried by a vessel at one time. 7. The amount of a disease-causing entity present in an organism. tr.v. bur·dened, bur·den·ing, bur·dens 1. To cause difficulty or distress to; distress or oppress. 2. To load or overload. [Middle English, from Old English byrthen; see bher-1 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots. Noun, senses 4 and 5, influenced by BOURDON.] Synonyms: burden, affliction, albatross, cross, millstone, trial, tribulation These nouns denote something onerous or troublesome: the burden of a guilty conscience; considered the television an affliction that destroyed the spirit of community; a poorly built home that became his albatross; an unhappy marriage that became a cross to bear; a routine duty that turned into a millstone; a troublemaker who is a trial to the teacher; suffered many tribulations in rising from poverty. See Also Synonyms at substance. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
