c.1860, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Husbandsmen, lines 4, 6-7:
Bidding them grope their way out and bestir, […] though the worst Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst
(obsolete or historical, nautical) The tonnage of a ship based on the number of tuns of wine that it could carry in its holds.
1940 December, Charles E. Lee, “The Wenford Mineral Line”, in Railway Magazine, pages 647, from the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, October 3, 1834:
[...] and thence to Calstock, a town on the Tamar, which is washed by the sea flowing through Plymouth Sound and Hamoaze, and which place vessels of 200 tons burthen can reach at spring tides—[...].
Rarely used musical tempo, meaning slow and ponderous (e.g., moving under a burden); similar to largo.
A section of music with the tempo mark burthen.
動詞
burthen (third-person singular simple presentburthens, present participleburthening, simple past and past participleburthened)
Archaic form of burden.
1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC: