as in harshness
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Recent Examples of Synonyms for oppressiveness
Noun
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The harshness or relentlessness of weather can turn friends to lovers, can cause others to lose their minds, can provoke travel across continents, can cancel plans, can reroute rivers, can flood civilizations, can incite both panic and delight, can wash away a life’s work, can set fire to forests.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
11 May 2026 -
Concrete and glass meet at sharp angles, while a curved courtyard wall softens the harshness.—
New Atlas,
New Atlas,
13 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Trying to find charm and not having malevolence as the intention, not trying to be evil, let the brilliant writing do that.—
David Canfield,
HollywoodReporter,
13 May 2026
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Reactions from tour loyalists at the time ranged from indifference to malevolence.—
Brendan Quinn,
New York Times,
11 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Granted, there was a lot to criticize in my writing, which was suffering from all sorts of problems, from structural incoherence to insufficient character development to—yes—didactic heavy-handedness that broke the reader’s immersion.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
23 Apr. 2026
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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
Noun
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Trump’s petulance, meanness, and willingness to punish a religious institution for its Church’s moral witness is a warning to every faith community in America.—
Stephen Underwood,
Hartford Courant,
19 Apr. 2026
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Would there be perpetual meanness and the absence of kindness toward each other as human beings?—
Kevin Powell,
MSNBC Newsweek,
31 Mar. 2026
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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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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An ugly first period added to the initial grimness.—
Kalen Lumpkins,
Chicago Tribune,
16 Apr. 2026
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There is some positive news amid the grimness.—
Michael Smolens,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
12 Apr. 2026
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“Oppressiveness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/oppressiveness. Accessed 15 May. 2026.
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