as in oppressiveness
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Recent Examples of Synonyms for hardhandedness
Noun
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Mikey Madison does a stellar job of switching back and forth between homicidal malevolence and victimhood, going straight for pity whenever Amber is cornered.—
Louis Peitzman,
Vulture,
27 Feb. 2026 -
Almost: Childhood is both bliss and terror, and the Richard D. James Album takes care to wrap malevolence and innocence tightly into the same steel coil.—
Sasha Geffen,
Pitchfork,
21 Jan. 2026
Noun
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Sunlight naturally sanitizes, and air drying prevents the harshness of high heat.—
Ashlyn Needham,
Southern Living,
14 Feb. 2026
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The tinted visor that Morgan Geekie wore for two games against the Chicago Blackhawks and Dallas Stars in January could help mute the lights’ harshness.—
Fluto Shinzawa,
New York Times,
1 Feb. 2026
Noun
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The result is a movie where the jokes are just mean, and the meanness isn’t funny, leading to a cynical denouement that’s been done many times before.—
Katie Rife,
IndieWire,
16 Mar. 2026
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Scott inflicts Ohm’s nonchalant meanness with a piercingly perverse matter-of-factness that places the character as far away as possible from the realm of likeability.—
Carlos Aguilar,
Variety,
15 Mar. 2026
Noun
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His Cyrano is the play’s hero, even if the character’s psychological limitations are as much a factor in the story as the machinations of De Guiche, whose malignity is sent up in Nathanson’s flamboyantly comic turn.—
Charles McNulty,
Los Angeles Times,
10 Sep. 2024
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For a decade, the central drama of Trumpism has concerned the Republican élites who continued to support him—the story has been about their malignity, or opportunism, or willful moral blindness.—
Benjamin Wallace-Wells,
The New Yorker,
16 Sep. 2023
Noun
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Trump’s narcissistic obsession with the place, together with the miasmic hatefulness of his words and actions, has caused artists to flee en masse.—
Alex Ross,
New Yorker,
19 Mar. 2026
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Comment sections have always attracted hatefulness and resentment; these ones just happen to encourage it more explicitly.—
Rebecca Jennings,
Vulture,
30 Sep. 2025
Noun
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The guy was a sleaze, but there’s a pretty big gap between sleaziness and murderousness.—
Sophie Brookover,
Vulture,
12 Dec. 2025
Noun
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The findings can’t be extrapolated to the real world — the scenarios were extreme, with the regimes often facing first strikes or annihilation — but revealed AIs’ skill at strategic reasoning, as well as a certain bloodthirstiness.—
Tom Chivers,
semafor.com,
4 Mar. 2026
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“Hardhandedness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hardhandedness. Accessed 4 Apr. 2026.
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