taedium vitaen.

1618 J. Chamberlain Let. 14 Oct. (1939) II. 170 The Lord Clifton..tooke his paterne from your Secretarie of Utrecht to stab and mangle himself with a penknife..without any other shew of reason or cause, but even vitæ tædio (as he saide himself).]

1759 E. Young Conjectures on Orig. Composition 8 Both These are happy in this, that by fixing their attention on objects most important, they escape numberless little anxieties, and that Taedium Vitae which often hangs so heavy on its evening hours.

1796 T. Jefferson Let. 24 Apr. in Papers (2002) XXIX. 83 My health has suddenly broken down, with symptoms which give me to believe I shall not have much to encounter of the tedium vitae.

1803 S. Owenson St. Clair xxi. 89 The dreadful oppression of the tedium vitae.

1826 Reg. Deb. Congress U.S. 30 Mar. 402 Tedium vitæ appears in Sunday Schools.

1855 Newsp. & Gen. Reader's Compan. 156 That taedium vitae, which springs from a consciousness of talents abused and opportunities lost.

1883 T. S. Clouston Clin. Lect. Mental Dis. xvii. 560 A cloud of vague depression rests on the man, who shuns society, falls off in fat, becomes restless and hypochondriacal, and feels strongly the tedium vitæ.

1891 O. Wilde Picture of Dorian Gray xi. 216 That ennui, that terrible tædium vitæ, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing.

1920 J. Huneker Painted Veils vi. 251 Her languour had not been dissipated; ‘tædium vitæ’, the doctor named it.

1940 ‘G. Orwell’ Inside Whale 159 Everyone with a safe £500 a year..began training himself in taedium vitae.

1958 L. Durrell Mountolive ix. 187 Even these simple motions of joining with the ordinary world of social habit and pleasure, of relieving the taedium vitae of his isolation, were all infected by the new knowledge.

1977 V. S. Pritchett Gentle Barbarian xii. 201 He..is suddenly attacked by the taedium vitae, the disgust with life, as a man who talks too well may easily be.