A bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

The earliest located instance in the provided material is a 1949 "Reader’s Digest" filler item that credits the line to "Gian Vincenzo Gravina" described (oddly) as a contemporary Italian author. Soon after, newspapers reprinted the definition, often without attribution. Later writers reused it: John D. MacDonald included it in a 1974 novel while attributing it to Gravina, and Roger Ebert repeated it in 1976 while crediting MacDonald. A related idea appears earlier in Marcel Proust’s novel, where a luncheon is said to take away solitude without offering real social connection, framed as a quotation passed down and attributed there to Mme de Sévigné.

The definition treats a “bore” as someone whose presence blocks the restorative value of being alone but also fails to deliver the benefits of engaging companionship—leaving you with neither solitude nor satisfying social interaction.

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.