fatigue

From French fatigue, from fatiguer, from Latin fatīgāre (“to weary, tire, vex, harass”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /fəˈtiːɡ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːɡ

fatigue (countable and uncountable, plural fatigues)

1. A weariness caused by exertion; exhaustion.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 181:

     My husband stayed for some days with the magistrate at Cardwell, recruiting his health and recovering from his fatigues, for the passage between Cape York and Cardwell had proved the most tedious and anxious part of the voyage.

   • 2012 December 29, Paul Doyle, “Arsenal's Theo Walcott hits hat-trick in thrilling victory over Newcastle”, in The Guardian‎:

     Alan Pardew finished by far the most frustrated man at the Emirates, blaming fatigue for the fact that Arsenal were able to kill his team off in the dying minutes.

2. (often in the plural) A menial task or tasks, especially in the military.
   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], OCLC 21345056, page 112:

     Moreover, the habits of business are the most enduring of any; and Lord Norbourne's most positive enjoyment was in what are called the fatigues of office.

3. (engineering) Weakening and eventual failure of material, typically by cracking leading to complete separation, caused by repeated application of mechanical stress to the material.
   • 2013, N. Dowling, Mechanical Behaviour of Materials, page 399

     Mechanical failures due to fatigue have been the subject of engineering efforts for more than 150 years.

• Thesaurus:fatigue

fatigue (third-person singular simple present fatigues, present participle fatiguing, simple past and past participle fatigued)

1. (transitive) To tire or make weary by physical or mental exertion.
2. (transitive, cooking) To wilt a salad by dressing or tossing it.
   • 1927, Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death, chapter 1

     The handsome, silver-haired proprietor was absorbed in fatiguing a salad for a family party.

3. (intransitive) To lose so much strength or energy that one becomes tired, weary, feeble or exhausted.
4. (intransitive, engineering, of a material specimen) To undergo the process of fatigue; to fail as a result of fatigue.
5. (transitive, engineering) To cause to undergo the process of fatigue.

   The repeated pressurization cycles fatigued the airplane's metal skin until it eventually broke up in flight.

• fatigable
• indefatigable

• fatigue in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• fatigue in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911

• IPA^(key): /fa.tiɡ/

• (file)

fatigue f (plural fatigues)

1. fatigue, weariness

• tomber de fatigue

• fatigué
• fatiguer

• “fatigue”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

fatigue

1. inflection of fatigar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

fatigue

1. inflection of fatigar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative