burthen

Noun

burthen (plural burthens)

1. (historical, obsolete) The tonnage of a ship based on the number of tuns of wine that it could carry in its holds.
   • It was a vessel of about seventy tons burthen, and shaped something like a Chinese junk.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 160
   • [...] and thence to Calstock, a town on the Tamar, which is washed by the sea flowing through Plymouth Sound and Hamoaze, and which place vessels of 200 tons burthen can reach at spring tides—[...].1940 December, Charles E. Lee, “The Wenford Mineral Line”, in Railway Magazine, pages 647, from the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, October 3, 1834
2. Rarely used musical tempo, meaning slow and ponderous (e.g., moving under a burden); similar to largo.
3. A section of music with the tempo mark burthen.