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A Pink Floyd song titled "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" starts with this line:

"A restless eye across a weary room"

I started looking up the various meanings of "weary" to see what it means in combination with room, but I didn't find anything that makes sense here. I just came across the same combination used in some hotel ad and that was all.

Would somebody in the know kindly help?

tchrist
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Mhrd
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    This is a figurative usage, and as such you won't find its meaning in a dictionary. I would interpret it as meaning the "restless eye" is tired of the room and its furnishings, perhaps its history as well. Note that questions about interpretation of lyrics are off-topic for this site. – Robusto Jun 24 '21 at 18:28
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    I’m voting to close this question because it is about interpretation of lyrics. – Michael Harvey Jun 24 '21 at 19:20
  • It's probably an example of transfered epithet. – user405662 Jun 24 '21 at 22:46
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    I would suggest we clarify the boundary between literary discussion and lyrics interpretation on the one hand, and language points also used in literature and lyrics on the other. While the former would be basically off-topic, the latter, just like the question I raised, is about a language point which was also found in a hotel ad. – Mhrd Jun 25 '21 at 12:52
  • Essentially, answered (hypallage / transferred epithets) at Is there a term for adjectives / modifiers that don't at face value seem to apply to the noun they're next to? – Edwin Ashworth Jun 25 '21 at 13:15
  • I voted to reopen this question because it deals with a figure of speech and how people react to it. This makes it useful for people like myself who use ELU primarily as a writing resource. Rules are useful too, and the community has to enforce them, but the rules should be based on the needs of the readers… –  Jun 29 '21 at 15:02
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    @Global Charm A real need is to avoid bloatware: covering the same ground again and again. Duplicates make searches that much harder. And few are going to look up 'weary room' ( or 'quiet pint', 'happy day', 'proud moment'...). And I'm sure that there's a better titled (for ease of searching) duplicate than the one I've turned up. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 07 '21 at 14:51

2 Answers2

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It's an example of metonymy (more specifically, hypallage), where the property "weary", which logically and literally applies to the people in the room, is instead applied to the room itself.

So it means something like "room full of weary people", or possibly "room that makes me feel weary".

Colin Fine
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Wiktionary provides a general definition of reading the room, which involves perceiving the mood of the people in the room. It’s a common phrase in show business.

Entertainers (even speakers) often have someone who appears before them who “warms up the room.”

Cue Magazine, 1969 · ‎Snippet view · Miss Diller will again be appearing with Ward Donovan, and greater love hath no wife for a husband than to let that man "warm up" the room for her. Don Rickles, hot as a pistol in Las Vegas and everywhere else these nights, does a return two-week gig at the Copa Nov. 13-26. The other big sparklers belong to the Empire Room .

A weary room would be an unresponsive one.

Laurel
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Xanne
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