oppressive
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /əˈpɹɛs.ɪv/
ipa: /əʊˈpɹɛs.ɪv/
rhymes: -ɛsɪv
Forms: form: more oppressive
form: most oppressive
Etymology: From oppress + -ive.
Senses: examples: text: The oppressive tax laws made it difficult to start a small company.
synonyms: grinding
glosses: Burdensome or difficult to bear.
examples: text: The oppressive land-owners kept a grip on the labourers.
synonyms: word: authoritarian
word: autocratic
word: bossy
word: coercive
word: commanding
word: controlling
word: demanding
word: despotic
word: dictatorial
word: dominant
word: domineering
word: forceful
word: harsh
word: heavy-handed
word: iron-fisted
word: iron-handed
word: monocratic
word: obtrusive
word: oppressive
word: overbearing
word: strict
word: tyrannical
word: airy
word: arrogant
word: authoritarian
word: biggity
word: big-headed
word: blustery
word: boastful
word: bombastic
word: buggish
word: cocky
word: conceited
word: disdainful
word: domineering
word: egotistical
word: entitled
word: flatulent
word: flaunting
word: full of oneself
word: grandiose
word: hankty
word: haught
word: haughty
word: haut
word: high-handed
word: high-hat
word: high and mighty
word: highfalutin
word: hoity-toity
word: holier-than-thou
word: imperious
word: inflated
word: insolent
word: la-di-da
word: ostentatious
word: overbearing
word: overweening
word: pompous
word: presumptuous
word: pretentious
word: priggish
word: puffed up
word: sanctimonious
word: self-important
word: snobbish
word: snooty
word: snotty
word: stout
word: stuck up
word: supercilious
word: thrasonic
word: thrasonical
word: toploftical
word: toplofty
word: tumid
word: turgid
word: uppish
word: uppity
word: uppy
word: upstage
word: vain
glosses: Tyrannical or exercising unjust power.
examples: text: Will the oppressive heat of summer never end?
text: Without being slaves in fact, their condition is little better than vassalage in its most oppressive form.
ref: 1807, The Literary Panorama 1807-01: Volume 1, Open Court Publishing Company, page 696:
text: The class of noblemen, who, at this particular epoch, had lost nothing of their primitive vigour, saw with pleasure the influence of the French depressed; but they suffered scarcely less from the absolute and oppressive influence which the Spaniards had acquired over them.
ref: 1827, Katharine Cover Sabin, ESP and Dream Analysis, Open Court Publishing Company, page 379:
text: Their mantle was for a while worn unconsciously by him who showed to us Macbeth: and here again, in the deepening gloom of this tragic tale, we feel the oppressive influence of this invisible power, from the time we hear the prophetic rhymes, the spell has begun its work, and the clouds of misfortune blacken round us; and the fated course moves solemnly onward, irresistible and unerring as the progress of the sun, and soon to end in a night of horror.
ref: 1847, Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature, Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, page 588:
text: With startling and oppressive force of illustration, he brings before us the fact, that in that grandest city of the earth, “if all the churches, chapels and buildings devoted to public worship, were filled to their last seat, there would be still left outside the buildings as many people as the whole population—men, women and children—in the cities of Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield and Birmingham.”
ref: 1864, The Theological Review, Whitfield, Green & Son, page 552:
text: It had been one of those unnaturally still and oppressive days when scarcely a leaf quivers, and every breath of air seems charged with electricity. Suddenly the thunder began to growl. Before many minutes eveiy pine-needle was shaking with a fierce chill wind, and a torrent of rain swept down the valley and drenched us through to the skin.
ref: 1887, Oscar Wilde, The Woman's World, Source Book Press,, page 75:
text: He defines it as belief in exalted spiritual powers by whose help human weakness is supplemented in its struggle with the oppressive forces of the natural world.
ref: 1895, The Hartford Seminary Record 1895-02: Volume 5, Issue 3, page 163:
text: Mr. Wardlaw had left the castle: so also had Charlotte, by her own wish, her residence there having been found too oppressive to herself to be continued for the present.
ref: 1912, Thomas Hardy, A Laodicean, Macmillan and Company, page 440:
text: The possibility that women are not very sensitive to odours is often suggested to men by the perfumes of oppressive strength which women frequently use.
ref: 1914, Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, The Macmillan Company,, page 158:
glosses: Weighing heavily on the spirit; being quite intense, excessive or overwhelming.
synonyms: humid
close
glosses: Hot and humid.
raw_tags: of the weather
Synonyms: harsh
Derived terms: antioppressive
inoppressive
nonoppressive
oppressively
oppressiveness
unoppressive