as in oppressiveness
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Recent Examples of Synonyms for hardhandedness
Noun
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Meanwhile, there was an undercurrent of malevolence coming from the Sabres’ Mason Geertsen (6-foot-5, 231 pounds), who got into a couple of jawing matches with 6-foot-7, 255-pound Nikita Zadorov, but nothing came of it.—
Steve Conroy,
Boston Herald,
12 Oct. 2025 -
To watch Lipe-Smith’s Caroline cuddle in bed watching TV on her iPad, or bopping around to JoJo Siwa, or pensively finishing a Popsicle while sitting beside her grandmother at a museum, is to have the sheer malevolence of our current administration and its adherents thrown into sharp relief.—
Sara Holdren,
Vulture,
1 Oct. 2025
Noun
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Middleton aimed to create a score that reflects the harshness and hope of the desert setting.—
Audrey Gibbs,
Nashville Tennessean,
17 Oct. 2025
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The harshness of the language and the raw politicking shocked voters.—
Matt Klink,
Oc Register,
6 Sep. 2025
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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Comment sections have always attracted hatefulness and resentment; these ones just happen to encourage it more explicitly.—
Rebecca Jennings,
Vulture,
30 Sep. 2025
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“Hardhandedness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hardhandedness. Accessed 20 Oct. 2025.
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