as in harshness
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Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for oppressiveness
Noun
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Sunlight naturally sanitizes, and air drying prevents the harshness of high heat.—
Ashlyn Needham,
Southern Living,
14 Feb. 2026 -
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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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
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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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Ziegler’s humor and sympathy for her characters—including Creon, who desperately wants to do right by everyone—saves the conflict between individual and state from heavy-handedness.—
Dan Stahl,
New Yorker,
13 Mar. 2026
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The Hims & Hers ad is shrewd in its heavy-handedness.—
Yasmin Tayag,
The Atlantic,
8 Feb. 2026
Noun
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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
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There is still some of that here, but a lot of Martin’s light-touch meanness is drowned out by his insistence on describing his characters within the context of early COVID — pulling out those masks from the closet.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
12 Mar. 2026
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
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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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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Any grimness is offset by Cory’s love for his canine best friends who are as carefully drawn as the humans.—
Mary Ann Grossmann,
Twin Cities,
8 Mar. 2026
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Happily, there are pleasures that precede this grimness.—
Helen Shaw,
New Yorker,
18 Dec. 2025
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“Oppressiveness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/oppressiveness. Accessed 18 Mar. 2026.
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