Something tedious is boringly repetitive and takes a long time to finish. When a teacher assigns 100 multiplication problems that all feel exactly the same, students often find the work tedious. When you have to alphabetize a huge stack of papers one by one, that's tedious. The task isn't necessarily hard, but it drags on and on without being interesting.

Tedious describes tasks that require attention but offer no mental challenge or variety. Copying vocabulary definitions word-for-word feels tedious because your brain isn't really engaged. Compare that to actually using those vocabulary words in creative sentences: that might be challenging, but it's not tedious because it requires thinking and creativity.

Tedious work wears you down through repetition and monotony, not through difficulty. A video game level might be tedious if you have to do the exact same thing twenty times to advance. A long car ride becomes tedious when the scenery never changes and there's nothing to do.

Notice that whether something feels tedious often depends on the person and the situation. Some people find knitting relaxing while others find it tedious. But when everyone agrees something is tedious, it usually means the task could have been designed better or made shorter.