Definition of "bother"

bother

/ˈbɔðə(ɹ)/

verb
third-person singular simple present bothers, present participle bothering, simple past and past participle bothered
1. (transitive) To annoy, to disturb, to irritate; to be troublesome to, to make trouble for.
2. (intransitive or reflexive) To feel care or concern; to burden or inconvenience oneself out of concern.
  Quotations
  To expand, without bothering about it—without shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other—to the full compass of what he would have called a "pleasant" experience, was Newman's most definite programme of life.
  1876–1877, Henry James, Jr., chapter V, in The American, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, […], published 5 May 1877, page 87
3. (intransitive, catenative) To take the trouble, to trouble oneself (to do something).
  1. To do something which is of negligible inconvenience.
noun
countable and uncountable, plural bothers
1. Fuss, ado.
  Quotations
  It was a 15-minute return trip to walk back home to pick up my device, but I weighed it up and decided that it wasn’t worth the bother.
  2015 January 18, Monty Munford, “What’s the point of carrying a mobile phone nowadays?”, in The Daily Telegraph‎
2. Trouble, inconvenience.
interjection
1. A mild expression of annoyance.
  Quotations
  [H]e suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said "Bother!" and "Oh blow!" and also "Hang spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.
  1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, London: Wordsworth Classics, published 1993, page 11
  "Oh, help!" said Pooh. "I'd better go back." / "Oh, bother!" said Pooh. "I shall have to go on." / "I can't do either!" said Pooh. "Oh, help and bother!"
  1926, A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh, Methuen & Co., Ltd., Chapter 2 ...in which Pooh goes visiting and gets into a tight place

Definition of "bother"

bother

verb

Quotations

noun

Quotations

interjection

Quotations