ponderous

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: pon=der=ous

CIDE DICTIONARY

ponderous, a. [L. ponderosus, from pondus, -eris, a weight: cf. F. pondéreux. See Ponder.].

•  Very heavy; weighty; as, a ponderous shield; a ponderous load; the ponderous elephant.  [1913 Webster]

  "The sepulcher . . .
  Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws."  [1913 Webster]
•  Important; momentous; forcible.  Shak.  [1913 Webster]
•  Heavy; dull; wanting; lightless or spirit; as, a ponderous style; a ponderous joke.  [1913 Webster]

Ponderous spar (Min.), heavy spar, or barytes. See Barite.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

ponderous, adj.
1 heavy; unwieldy.
2 laborious.
3 (of style etc.) dull; tedious.

Derivative

ponderosity n. ponderously adv. ponderousness n.

Etymology

ME f. L ponderosus f. pondus -eris weight

THESAURUS

ponderous

Latinate, all thumbs, arid, awkward, barren, big, blah, blank, bloodless, blunderheaded, blundering, bombastic, boorish, boring, bulky, bumbling, bungling, butterfingered, careless, characterless, clownish, clumsy, clumsy-fisted, cold, colorless, contrary, cramped, crosswise, cumbersome, cumbrous, dead, dismal, draggy, drearisome, dreary, dry, dryasdust, dull, dusty, effete, elephantine, empty, etiolated, fade, fat, fingers all thumbs, flat, forced, formal, fumbling, gauche, gawkish, gawky, graceless, grandiloquent, guinde, halting, ham-fisted, ham-handed, heavy, heavy-handed, heavyweight, hefty, ho-hum, hollow, huge, hulking, hulky, impractical, inane, inconvenient, inelegant, inexcitable, inflated, inkhorn, insipid, jejune, labored, laborious, large, leaden, left-hand, left-handed, lifeless, long-winded, loutish, low-spirited, lubberly, lumbering, lumpish, lumpy, maladroit, massive, massy, oafish, overdone, overweight, pale, pallid, pedestrian, perverse, plodding, pointless, poky, pompous, prolix, sesquipedalian, sloppy, slow, solemn, spiritless, sterile, stiff, stilted, stodgy, stuffy, superficial, tasteless, tedious, tiresome, turgid, uncouth, ungainly, ungraceful, unhandy, unlively, unmanageable, unwieldy, vapid, verbose, weighty, windy, wooden, wordy

ROGET THESAURUS

ponderous

Inelegance

N inelegance, stiffness, unlettered Muse, barbarism, slang, solecism, mannerism, euphuism, fustian, cacophony, words that break the teeth, words that dislocate the jaw, marinism, inelegant, graceless, ungraceful, harsh, abrupt, dry, stiff, cramped, formal, guinde, forced, labored, artificial, mannered, ponderous, awkward, uncourtly, unpolished, turgid, affected, euphuistic, barbarous, uncouth, grotesque, rude, crude, halting, offensive to ears polite, Spoken Language.

Gravity

N gravity, gravitation, weight, heaviness, specific gravity, pondorosity, pressure, load, burden, burthen, ballast, counterpoise, lump of, mass of, weight of, lead, millstone, mountain, Ossa on Pelion, weighing, ponderation, trutination, weights, avoirdupois weight, troy weight, apothecaries' weight, grain, scruple, drachma, ounce, pound, lb, arroba, load, stone, hundredweight, cwt, ton, long ton, metric ton, quintal, carat, pennyweight, tod, gram, centigram, milligram, microgram, kilogram, nanogram, picogram, femtogram, attogram, balance, scale, scales, steelyard, beam, weighbridge, spring balance, piezoelectric balance, analytical balance, two-pan balance, one-pan balance, postal scale, baby scale, statics, weighty, weighing, heavy as lead, ponderous, ponderable, lumpish, lumpy, cumbersome, burdensome, cumbrous, unwieldy, massive, incumbent, superincumbent.