Definition of PONDEROUS

Examples of ponderous in a Sentence

students struggling to stay awake during a ponderous lecture
fell asleep during the ponderous speech

Recent Examples of ponderous from the Web

Miraculously, these five explore grief without getting ponderous or even, actually, depressing.

— john timpane, Philly.com, "'Rabbit Hole' by Theater with a View: Connecting, or not, through suffering," 20 July 2017
Too many early mornings and late nights, too much bread and wine, too many ponderous political allegories—in the films and in real life, all the Croisette’s opulence alarmingly guarded by policemen carrying machine guns.

— vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, "Sofia Coppola’s," 24 May 2017
Sense8 Is Auteur Television That’s Actually Fun—David Sims argues that Season 2 of the indulgent Netflix series stands out amid all the dark, ponderous dramas.

— the editors, The Atlantic, "The Atlantic's Week in Culture," 5 May 2017
And though some of the existing Netflix shows about these heroes have been dark and ponderous, the four seem to be having a lot more fun in this more light-hearted trailer.

— kelly lawler, USA TODAY, "'Marvel's The Defenders' gets the snarky, punchy trailer it deserves," 3 May 2017
Korvette resists the ponderous sincerity that often comes with putting away childish things.

— dan piepenbring, The New Yorker, "A Punk Band That Knows “The Bar Is Low” for Straight White Men," 8 Apr. 2017
Although less ponderous than most of Webber’s works, the score is dizzyingly busy at times, and the small orchestra under the direction of Sierra Dee does a fine job navigating it.

— sam hurwitt, The Mercury News, "Review: Jesus gets groovy in ‘Superstar’ in Livermore," 19 Jan. 2017
The original has a groove that’s seeping verging on ponderous.

— ben ratliff, jon caramanica and jon pareles, New York Times, "The Playlist: Fall Out Boy Makes Us Very Afraid," 24 June 2016
And what turns them off is exactly what makes this artist an academic darling, a knot of riddles to be untied, retied and untied again, which is what much of the ponderous catalog is about.

— holland cotter, New York Times, "“Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective,”," 11 Feb. 2016

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ponderous.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of ponderous

Middle English, from Anglo-French ponderus, from Latin ponderosus, from ponder-, pondus weight

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First Known Use: 15th century

See Words from the same year

ponderous Synonyms

Synonym Discussion of ponderous

heavy, weighty, ponderous, cumbrous, cumbersome mean having great weight. heavy implies that something has greater density or thickness than the average of its kind or class. a heavy child for his age weighty suggests having actual and not just relative weight. a load of weighty boxes ponderous implies having great weight because of size and massiveness with resulting great inertia. ponderous elephants in a circus parade cumbrous and cumbersome imply heaviness and bulkiness that make for difficulty in grasping, moving, carrying, or manipulating. wrestled with the cumbrous furniture early cameras were cumbersome and inconvenient