Etymology

irksome

irk·some
I1R1K5S1O1M3E1

Today it means: Marked by irritation or annoyance; disagreeable; troublesome by reason of long continuance or repetition Full definition →

Middle English irkesome ← Old English weorcsum
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Old English · inherited fromweorcsum“painful, hurtful”
  2. Middle English · inherited fromirkesome
  3. English todayirksome

From Middle English irkesome, irksum, equivalent to irk + -some, or perhaps continuing (in altered form) from Old English weorcsum (“painful, hurtful”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.