Idioms

try one's patience

try (one's) patience

To frustrate or annoy one by continued unwanted behavior; to test the limits of one's patience. His tangential questions are clearly trying the professor's patience, who asked that all questions be held until the end of the lecture. Will you take the kids to the playground for an hour? They're really trying my patience.

See also: patience, try

Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

try one's patience

Put one's tolerance to a severe test, cause one to be annoyed, as in Putting these parts together really tries my patience, or Her constant lateness tries our patience. This idiom uses try in the sense of "test," a usage dating from about 1300.

See also: patience, try

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

See also:

References in periodicals archive

Tech can be a process that will try one's patience. By the day's end, we can get cranky and tired.

I can't, I'm in tech; Bravo, 'M. Butterfly'

This implies the Fed sees no threat of too high inflation and quite a bit of threat of inflation being too low for long enough to try one's patience.

Federal reserve playing patience

A pity, then, that the book is so bulky and tedious in parts; the interminable flashbacks and accounts of family reunions and visits to various places (one wishes for a map) sorely try one's patience. Often the text contains entire sentences in Afrikaans, and there are several clumsy translations from the original, such as "the calf of his one leg." Other expressions will be lost on the English reader, e.g.

This plant can get out of hand so quickly that it takes over your lawn and your neighbor's lawn too, and the tangle of prickly brambles has other drawbacks that try one's patience.

Teach a child to wonder

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