a pain (in the neck)informal

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

someone or something that annoys you
annoyanceThe café was cash only, which was a minor annoyance as I only had my credit card with me.
nuisanceIt's a nuisance to have to drive to the nearest shop.
inconvenienceThank you for holding - we apologize for the inconvenience.
irritationThe CEO's poor communication skills became a source of irritation to the company's investors.
irritantThe noise of the building work is a constant irritant.
boreIt's such a bore to have to pack everything up again.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Inconvenience
a pain (in the neck)idiom
a pain in the arse/backsideidiom
aggravation
aggro
awkward
bulky
burden
disturbance
hassle
have fun and gamesidiom
imposition
incommode
incommodious
nuisance
palaver
pinprick
pisser
tempest
untoward
untowardly
bother
exclamation
UKold-fashioneduk /ˈbɒð.ər/ us /ˈbɑː.ðɚ/
used to express anger: 糟糕，讨厌（表示气恼）
Oh bother! It's raining and I left my umbrella at home.啊，讨厌！下雨了，可我把伞忘在家里了。

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Expressions of anger
ay
bally
beg
biscuit
blast
blasted
bloody
dickens
drat
dratted
egad
fie
flaming
flip
la
marry
need
precious
put/stick that in your pipe and smoke it!idiom
rats

bother | American Dictionary

bother
verb
us/ˈbɑð·ər/

botherverb (MAKE AN EFFORT)

[ I ]
to make an effort to do something, esp. something that is not convenient:
You won’t get any credit for doing it, so why bother?
Don’t bother doing the laundry.
[ + to infinitive ]He didn’t even bother to say goodbye.

botherverb (ANNOY)

[ I/T ]
to annoy, worry, or cause problems for someone:
[ T ]The heat was beginning to bother him, so he sat down.
[ T ]Does it bother you if your children aren’t interested?
bother
noun[ U ]
us/ˈbɑð·ər/

bothernoun[U] (EFFORT)

a big effort:
I’m not sure gardening is worth the bother.

bothernoun[U] (WORRY)

something that annoys or causes problems for someone:
That dog has never been a bother to anyone.

Examples of bother

bother
My sense rather is that they were clearly an anxious group, as he insists, but they were bothered rather than troubled by slavery.
She sat and stared, and did not want to be bothered with anything.
One soon stops bothering when after leafing through nearly 500 pages there is only a reference to more literature.
People who lead quiet lives not bothering with politics and the community are being somewhat selfish.
Since he also might not have, we should not be bothered by this result.
The most significant factor is one which is heavily loaded with features of general well-being such as being bothered by nerves or depressed.
The fact that his dissertation work on hyperinflation became his peak achievement bothered him.
By the 1970s the academic modernizers had fallen silent, seldom even bothering to respond to their numerous critics.
Only a small number of researchers have bothered to ask the learners themselves what they think about these issues.
In 1952 only 29.7 per cent of those eligible to vote bothered to register, and of those who registered 12.4 per cent failed to vote.
We don't want government officials bothering us with their development projects, taking our money and never doing anything.
Not even his biographers have bothered to mention it.
You see, years ago a doctor never even bothered about your weight.
With respect to memetics, the authors are bothered by the lack of a clear definition of a meme.
No, she said she couldn't be bothered to take it home.
See all examples of bother
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.