monotony.

1. A dull lack of change or variety that makes an activity, situation, or setting feel repetitive.

2. A lack of variation in tone, pitch, or the sound being heard.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• break the monotony
• relieve the monotony
• escape the monotony
• the monotony of daily life
• the monotony of repetitive work

On the page

She changed her route each morning to escape the monotony of the same blank streets.

A handwritten note among the invoices broke the monotony of the afternoon.

The fields blurred into a monotony of brown earth and wire fences.

The monotony of his delivery made the warning sound like a routine announcement.

She drifted to sleep in the soft monotony of the engine’s hum.

Usage notes

Noun, normally uncountable: the monotony of the task; escape monotony; break the monotony. The plural monotonies is possible for distinct kinds or instances, but the uncountable form is the usual learner pattern. A modified phrase such as a dull monotony can characterize the quality rather than count an ordinary object. Monotonous is the related adjective and monotonously the adverb. No verb inflections apply to monotony. The Sound label applies to sense 2; sense 1 can describe routines, tasks, or visual surroundings without any sound. No emotional intensity is inherent in the noun, so no numeric intensity or controlled mood is assigned. Register: neutral. Commonness: common in descriptions of repetitive work, routine, or surroundings; the sound-specific sense is less common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).