Adjective

(en adjective)

Heavy, massive, weighty.

* 1879 , , Archibald Malmaison , ch. 5:

[H]e saw, at the end of a shallow embrasure, a ponderous door of dark wood, braced with iron.

* Edgar B. P. Darlington, The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings , ch. 4:

The great elephant, when the cage was being placed, would, at a signal from its keeper, place its ponderous head against one side of the cage and push.

(figuratively, by extension) Serious, onerous, oppressive.

* 1781 , , Lives of the Poets , "Dryden":

It was Dryden's opinion . . . that the drama required an alternation of comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the fatigue of toilsome passions.

* 1845 , , Pictures From Italy , ch. 11:

In its court-yard—worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom—is a massive staircase.

* 1915 , , The Voyage Out , ch. 19:

For the time, her own body was the source of all the life in the world, which tried to burst forth here—there—and was repressed now by Mr. Bax, now by Evelyn, now by the imposition of ponderous stupidity.

Clumsy, unwieldy, or slow, especially due to weight.

* 1915 , , Little Miss Grouch , ch. 10:

Slowly, through an increasing glow that lighted land and water alike, the leviathan of the deep made her ponderous progress to the hill-encircled harbor.

* 1919 , , "Kew Gardens":

Following his steps . . . came two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout and ponderous , the other rosy cheeked and nimble.

Dull, boring, tedious; long-winded in expression.

* 1863 , , "Cousin Phillis":

Over supper the minister did unbend a little into one or two ponderous jokes.

* 1918 , , A Daughter Of The Land , ch. 2:

[A]s certainly as any one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls, delivered with ponderous circumlocution.

(rare) Characterized by or associated with pondering.

* , "Sermon Upon John III" in Works of Thomas Manton (2002 edition), ISBN 9781589603462, p. 464:

Ponderous thoughts take hold of the heart; musing maketh the fire to burn, and steady sight hath the greatest influence upon us.

* 1804 , The Literary Magazine and American Register , vol. 2, no. 7, p. 10:

The acute and ponderous mind of Dr. Johnson was not always right in its decisions.

* 1850 , Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country , vol. 41, p. 242:

They are the pleasantest of all companions, and perhaps the most affluent in correct opinions of men and things generally , although little addicted to ponderous consideration or deep research.

(obsolete) Dense.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.

* (Nathaniel Hawthorne) (1804-1864)

There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone.

* 2008 , Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (ISBN 0307483762), page 199:

In adults, the same kind of anger has been studied in people trying to solve a very difficult math problem. Though the tough math problem is very frustrating, there is an active attempt to solve the problem and meet the goal.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.

Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.