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What is "monotony"

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monotony
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
monotony
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
break
▪ For many it was something to break up the monotony of camp-life.
▪ No trees or houses broke the monotony of the deserted fields.
▪ My duty was to supply conversation to break up the monotony of the heat-haze on the straight roads through the bush.
▪ Want to break up the monotony.
▪ Thinking, maybe, that it would break the monotony, the tedious spell of the highway.
▪ You know, a little jaunt to break the monotony.
▪ Their original intentions were to break up the monotony of the London dance scene and inject a little humour and imagination.
relieve
▪ This year's card would relieve the monotony.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The monotony of prison life is enough to drive anyone insane.
▪ the monotony of the prairie highways
▪ The sheer monotony of the work is itself exhausting.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All masters are by him translated into one monotony of commonplace.
▪ Excessive equality makes for cultural uniformity and monotony.
▪ For a day or two this tactic was mildly successful, but eventually even Auster began to droop from the monotony.
▪ I was glad of the break to get away from the monotony of the orchard with the constant sniping and mortaring.
▪ Isabel listened to the sound of Chalon's steady hoofbeats, finding a vague comfort in the monotony of the noise.
▪ It's the monotony I don't like - it's repetitive and you have to do the same things each day.
▪ Regular movement tends towards monotony, giving the effect of a hymn-tune.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Monotony

Monotony \Mo*not"o*ny\, n. [Gr. ?: cf. F. monotonie. See Monotonius.]

  1. A frequent recurrence of the same tone or sound, producing a dull uniformity; absence of variety, as in speaking or singing.

  2. Any irksome sameness, or want of variety.

    At sea, everything that breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts attention.
    --W. Irving.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
monotony

1706, originally in transferred sense of "wearisome, tiresome," from French monotonie (1670s), from Greek monotonia "sameness of tone, monotony," from monotonos "monotonous, of one tone," from monos "single, alone" (see mono-) + tonos "tone" (see tenet). Literal sense of "sameness of tone or pitch" in English is from 1724.

Wiktionary
monotony

n. tedium as a result of repetition or a lack of variety.

WordNet
monotony

  1. n. the quality of wearisome constancy and lack of variety; "he had never grown accustomed to the monotony of his work"; "he hated the sameness of the food the college served" [syn: sameness]

  2. constancy of tone or pitch or inflection

Usage examples of "monotony".

There were times he longed for something interesting to happen, in order to break up the quiet monotony that was so much a part of Antler existence.

Much as she liked Menzies, much as she appreciated this break in the monotony, she needed to rest.

He avoided not only the modulatory monotony of the classical school, but, especially, the commonplace endings which marred so many classical compositions.

There were no bellflowers, rampions, worts, groundsels, daisies, lilies, saxifrages, pinks, monkshoods, or beautiful little edelweiss to ease the bitter cold monotony of the freezing fields of winter.

Nor did it appear to give him any consolation to be aware of the commotion he was causing on the other side of the wall, where a threshing machine of an antiquated sort responded with multiform movement to the monotony of his round-and-round.

An interminable period of monotony lived in the eternal mists, swirling with sluggish dankness, enervating, miasmatic, pulsant with the secret whisperings of mephitic lifeforms.

The people of Hythe, fishers, or such poor traders as supplied the fishermen with a few coarse necessaries, were rouzed from the usual monotony of their lives by the aspect of this fleet.

The shate shate shate of the wheels under you quiets the spirit, the monotony of sound quiets the soul, and the ever-changing scenery occupies the mind simply.

But while one part of his brain, alert and watchful, took cognisance of these matters, all the greater part was lulled and stupefied with the long monotony of the affair.

One day had blended into another with reassuring monotony as they traveled beside her productive waters in the natural warmth of summer.

Through this bush, the endless monotony of which wore so strangely on the trekkers that desert country would have been welcome, they never made an average of five miles a day.

It was a noble illusion, doomed to failure, the versatile genius of language cried out against the monotony of their Utopia, and the crowds who were to people the unbuilded city of their dreams went straying after the feathered chiefs of the rebels, who, when the fulness of time was come, themselves received apotheosis and the honours of a new motley pantheon.

The noise of the iron-teethed rollers crunching the lumps of coal, and the bang and rattle of ponderous machinery were never before so loud and discordant, and the black streams moving down their narrow channels never passed beneath these dizzy boys in monotony quite so dull and ceaseless as they were passing this day.

Easter court in Speyer, and heartily glad to have left behind the barbaric crudity, the squalor and monotony of the Danubian fortresses for the amenities of more civilized surroundings near the Rhine.

The minor key in which the Sclavonic folksong was usually couched, together with its extraordinary variety of rhythm and phrase, protected it from this monotony, the minor keys having infinitely richer resources of colour, even when strictly diatonically treated, than the major.