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I have been asked by a young friend, "Which is correct: bored by, bored of, or bored with?" My instinct is to say that "bored of" and "bored by" are fine, but "bored with" sounds like she is being bored alongside someone else who is also bored. My trusty Dictionary of English Usage has failed me. Any thoughts?

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This is not "General Reference". The rise of "bored of" is quite a new phenomenon, still far more common in speech than writing. The fact that oxforddictionaries has an item about it doesn't make this a trivial issue. Most native speakers only "know" it because it's a rapid change happening in their own lifetime. – FumbleFingers May 4 '12 at 22:05
@Aidan: if you believe your question has been answered, you may want to mark it as answered. It will help people finding what they need instead of bumping into unanswered questions. ;) – Fr0zenFyr May 5 '12 at 10:43

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It always sounds wrong to me to use "bored of". My litmus test is to create parallel sentences and see how things fall. I would say, "I am contented with sitting here." I would never say, "I am contented of sitting here." Or, I would say, "I am happy with watching". Not, "I am happy of watching". It works for me. Hence, "I am bored of sitting or bored of watching, or bored of anything else just is incorrect syntax.

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"Contented" seems to have fallen out of use (in this fashion). I had to look twice at that. books.google.com/ngrams/… – dotsamuelswan Apr 9 at 13:14
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They're just alternative prepositions - no "grammatical rule" dictates that any one in particular is right or wrong.

Having said that - in my opinion "bored of" sounds "uneducated", so I'd avoid it in any but the most informal contexts. I think there's no real justification for this, but here's my evidence that most people agree with me...

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On the Internet at large, Google reports 25M instances of "bored of" - against 17M for "bored with", and only 7M for "bored by". The difference between the Google Internet and Google Books is primarily down to the fact that the relative newcomer "bored of" is still primarily a spoken usage, not considered quite "proper" in written contexts.

TL;DR: Safest is "with" - "by" is okay, but avoid "of" if you want to sound like a careful speaker.

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The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English says that "British English also has bored of, esp. in children's language." I thought you might like that quote. – Alex B. May 4 '12 at 21:49
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@Alex B.: I had a friend who used to rant about people saying "I would of [done something]". She regularly used to lay into "bored of [something]" within the same tirade, despite me trying to point out that they were totally different contexts. The first is really ignorant - the second just sounds ignorant (probably by association, imho! :). – FumbleFingers May 4 '12 at 21:58
@FumbleFingers, it is neither appropriate nor necessary to use the "TL;DR:" abbreviation in answers here, because "In short" is more meaningful and more readable. You have also badly punctuated the sentence after that abbreviation. – jwpat7 May 5 '12 at 2:14
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@jwpat7: Whilst I don't say your points are totally without merit, I was and remain perfectly happy with my final sentence phrased and punctuated as originally written, so I've reverted your edit. As regards "TL;DR" - it's a common enough abbreviation online, especially in this sort of context. Whether I enter it with or without the semicolon, Google is falling over itself to tell me what it means (which I had to do myself in earnest about a year ago, when I first encountered it here on ELU). I certainly don't consider it "inappropriate" for the site. – FumbleFingers May 8 '12 at 15:25
In relation to the sub-issue of "would of". This has arisen purely through slack speech, i.e. people saying the correct form, past tense, "would have", but pronouncing it "would've" which sounds like "would of". With no knowledge of grammar, one wouldn't realise the error. Same applies to "could of". Kids were making this error 30 years ago when I was teaching, long before texting. Another classic the was "are" instead of "our" as in "meet at are (our) house". In Watford the words are pronounced exactly the same. – Jon Stone Apr 26 at 9:15
up vote 6 down vote

All are correct!!

I'm bored of being the winner!

I'm being bored by my colleagues!

I'm totally bored with my tasks at work!

Yet another usage, I'm bored to death!! ;)

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How about, "I'm bored from watching television all day." – J.R. May 4 '12 at 21:20
I came across many instances where I find people using "bored from" in a similar manner. If I ever used "bored from", it has been in a different way. For example, "I get bored from morning till noon on Fridays", but its fair to argue that "from" maybe replaced with "during". IMHO, the usage "bored from" doesn't sound right somehow, but that's just me. :) – Fr0zenFyr May 5 '12 at 3:55
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I checked Google books before I posted; such usage is out there in the literature. Not that books are teeming with the phrase, but it exists nonetheless. If you run a search, you'll find LOTS of references, but most of them are using the word "bore" as a verb meaning "drill" (e.g., the holes are bored from both sides...). Sift through the results long enough, though, and you'll find a few references such as bored from doing nothing. I'll warn you: because the first usage is so predominant, it might take awhile to find them, so you might get bored from the exercise. – J.R. May 5 '12 at 9:31
Cheers J.R!! You are quite right. – Fr0zenFyr May 5 '12 at 10:38

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