to wear upon
- phrasal verb
- /wɛr əˈpɒn/
:
agotar
- The long hours of work began to wear upon her energy, making her feel exhausted.
Examples
-
The stress of the upcoming exams began to wear upon the students, leading to increased anxiety.
-
Constantly caring for her sick parents started to wear upon his mental health.
-
Who would dare induce wear upon the greatest of human technology only to speak to someone of a lesser species?
Fiction book (2001)
Synonyms
194
3.2
To make someone very tired
84
4.6
Make someone tired over time because of stress or effort
27
4.1
Slowly make a person or thing weaker by repeated pressure
23
1.0
To become very tired or make someone very tired
19
2.7
To make a person very tired or a thing stop working by using it too much
11
4.6
To make someone very tired by hard work or long effort
10
2.1
To make a person very tired by using up their energy
4
4.4
To make someone or yourself very tired after long effort
1
8.1
To make someone tired or bored by doing something too often
1
5.6
Become thin or damaged from use, like a carpet
1
9.7
To become very tired after hard work or stress
To make someone very tired by long, hard effort
To make someone very tired by doing too much without rest
To work very hard until you feel tired
Antonyms
How Tiring
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'to cause someone to become exhausted' is directly built from 'wear' (to tire or exhaust) plus the preposition 'upon' (on/over/through), so the overall meaning is compositional: someone or something wears upon a person, i.e. tires them over time. This follows common English patterns (cf. wear on, wear down) and is therefore likely understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Wear upon may come from the image of a cloth rubbed again and again until it becomes thin. That slow rubbing is like constant pressure that slowly 'wears upon' a person, making them 'tired' or 'worn out'.