sedulous
adjective
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Dedicate Yourself to Learning the History of Sedulous
No fooling—the word sedulous ultimately comes from Latin se dolus, which literally means "without guile." Those two words were eventually melded into one, sedulo, meaning "sincerely" or "diligently," and from that root developed Latin sedulus and English sedulous. Don't let the sed- beginning mislead you; sedulous is not related to words such as sedentary or sedate (those derive from the Latin verb sedēre, meaning "to sit"). Sedulous people are not the sedate or sedentary sort. They're the hardworking types Scottish author Samuel Smiles must have had in mind when he wrote in his 1859 book Self-Help, "Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true worker."
Examples of sedulous in a Sentence
Trushant Mehta, Forbes.com, 15 Aug. 2025
Putting festivals like this on stage is clearly just one part of the slow, sedulous work of relationship building and repair.
—Jeremy Eichler, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Mar. 2023
Among the advantages that billionaires receive due to their wealth is sedulous defenses by journalists and other camp followers.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 16 Dec. 2022
Led by Martin Amis, their ranks included Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie—and a sedulous outlier named A.N. Wilson.
—Brenda Cronin, WSJ, 28 Oct. 2022
The skirmish over Arista was the second great battle of Clive’s life, as a sedulous Vanity Fair account of the affair put it.
—Amy X. Wang, Rolling Stone, 9 Sep. 2021
Cite this Entry
“Sedulous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sedulous. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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