ponderous

adj

1. Heavy, massive, weighty.

   “[H]e saw, at the end of a shallow embrasure, a ponderous door of dark wood, braced with iron.”

   “The great elephant, when the cage was being placed, would, at a signal from its keeper, place its ponderous head against one side of the cage and push.”

   “Set against the background of the American civil war, with Keaton a cunning but unskilled driver, unaided, of the ponderous giant of a locomotive, it remains not only probably the funniest film about railways ever made, but one of the funniest silent films to retain its comic power over today's more sophisticated audiences.”

2. (broadly, figuratively)Serious, onerous, oppressive.

   “It was Dryden's opinion . . . that the drama required an alternation of comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the fatigue of toilsome passions.”

   “In its court-yard—worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom—is a massive staircase.”

   “For the time, her own body was the source of all the life in the world, which tried to burst forth here—there—and was repressed now by Mr. Bax, now by Evelyn, now by the imposition of ponderous stupidity.”

3. Clumsy, unwieldy, or slow, especially due to weight.

   “[T]he inmates of the coach, by numerous hard, painful joltings, and ponderous, dragging trundlings, are suddenly made sensible of some great change in the character of the road.”

   “Slowly, through an increasing glow that lighted land and water alike, the leviathan of the deep made her ponderous progress to the hill-encircled harbor.”

   “Following his steps . . . came two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout and ponderous, the other rosy cheeked and nimble.”

4. Dull, boring, tedious; long-winded in expression.

   “Over supper the minister did unbend a little into one or two ponderous jokes.”

   “[A]s certainly as any one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls, delivered with ponderous circumlocution.”

5. (rare)Characterized by or associated with pondering.

   “Ponderous thoughts take hold of the heart; musing maketh the fire to burn, and steady sight hath the greatest influence upon us.”

   “The acute and ponderous mind of Dr. Johnson was not always right in its decisions.”

   “They are the pleasantest of all companions, and perhaps the most affluent in correct opinions of men and things generally, although little addicted to ponderous consideration or deep research.”

6. (obsolete)Dense.