noun

• 1usually in singular A cause of great distress or annoyance.

  ‘the telephone was the bane of my life’

  More example sentences

  • ‘His dyslexia - the bane of his life - meant that he found writing difficult, and he preferred giving papers at meetings.’
  • ‘On the other hand there are the low waist pants - the bane of my life.’
  • ‘In fact the bane of my life was a cousin and his birthday parties.’
  • ‘The 73, the busiest bus-route in London, was the bane of my life when I lived in Stoke Newington.’
  • ‘Despite the financial security an older man can offer younger women, their eccentricities can be the bane of her life.’
  • ‘They had to be counted, bagged and labelled and they were the bane of my life.’
  • ‘This issue has absolutely been the bane of my life in this country for 32 years.’
  • ‘It was the bane of her life, or at least it was presently.’
  • ‘It's the bane of my life, and probably yours too.’
  • ‘Even though he considered his older double the bane of his life, he seemed unable to ignore him.’
  • ‘This was because opposable thumbs or not, buttons would forever be the bane of his life.’
  • ‘You have been the bane of my life ever since you were born with your whining and your constant need of me!’
  • ‘That evil is malevolent violence, a curse that is the bane of our human existence.’
  • ‘When juvenile nuisance and disorder are the bane of so many neighbourhoods already, some people are not only fuelling this curse, but actually making a profit from it.’
  • ‘I have to say that, as a mother, fancy dress is the bane of my life. This week my daughters require no fewer than four outfits, one each for a school event and two more for a party.’
  • ‘Critics are seen as the bane of writers' lives, torturing their intuitively wrought texts by dissection with a sharp set of surgical knives.’
  • ‘Those bad tempered personnel manning counters in the revenue offices will no longer be the bane of citizens' existence.’
  • ‘All I am to him is the bane of his existence, the blight of his life, the central focus of why he hates his job and wants to kill himself.’
  • ‘Cell phones make it much easier to suffer through the brutal traffic jams that are the bane of city life around the world.’
  • ‘The problem of color description has been a bane to mineralogists.’

  Synonyms

  scourge, ruin, death, plague, ruination, destruction

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• 2archaic usually in singular Something, especially poison, which causes death.

  Synonyms

  poison, toxin

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