Boredom is an emotional state experienced during periods of lack of activities or when individuals are uninterested in the activities surrounding them. Etymology The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, although the expression to be a bore had been used in the sense of "to be tiresome or dull" since 1768. Psychology Boredom has been defined by Fisher in terms of its central psychological processes: “an unpleasant, transient af… (More on Boredom)