Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being heavy; weight; burden; gravity.
  • noun A heavy state of mind; grief; sorrow; despondency; sluggishness; languidness; oppression; tediousness.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state or quality of being heavy in its various senses; weight; sadness; sluggishness; oppression; thickness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being heavy; weight, weightiness, force of impact or gravity.
  • noun obsolete Oppression; dejectedness, sadness.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun persisting sadness
  • noun an oppressive quality that is laborious and solemn and lacks grace or fluency
  • noun the property of being comparatively great in weight
  • noun unwelcome burdensome difficulty
  • noun used of a line or mark

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From heavy +‎ -ness.

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Examples

  • Making a death metal album sound nice and clean without losing the heaviness is a subtle art and he's consistently nailed it.

    Music (For Robots): October 2006 Archives 2006

  • Making a death metal album sound nice and clean without losing the heaviness is a subtle art and he's consistently nailed it.

    Sunday morning metal (Music (For Robots)) 2006

  • However, this heaviness is also a result of the author's ardent and instant imagination, forming a scene and a dialogue of each incident in the narrative without taking the necessary backward look at the general perspective.

    Nobel Prize in Literature 1928 - Presentation Speech 1928

  • Indeed, I was in rather a low way that day; which was due in part to my not being able, for all my thinking, to see any sort of a clear course before me; and in part to the fact that the weather was thickening and that my spirits were dulled a good deal by what we call the heaviness of the air.

    In the Sargasso Sea A Novel 1881

  • Great heaviness is often necessary to a Christian's good: If need be, you are in heaviness.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation) 1721

  • Jean Pierre: The things that happen in the book are heavy, but I do think the heaviness is somewhat diluted by the fact that Celie writes with such sad acceptance instead of anger.

    The Color Purple by Alice Walker 2007

  • There must be something in the air or the moon because this heaviness is upon me too.

    Listening to silence | Her Bad Mother 2006

  • There are a certain number of passages where Amiel ceases to be the writer, and becomes the technical philosopher; there are others, though not many, into which a certain German heaviness and diffuseness has crept, dulling the edge of the sentences, and retarding the development of the thought.

    Amiel's Journal Henri Fr��d��ric Amiel 1885

  • I wrote this same unto you -- namely, that I would not come to you then (2Co 2: 1), as, if I were to come then, it would have to be "in heaviness" (causing sorrow both to him and them, owing to their impenitent state).

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

  • Compare "now for a season ... in heaviness" (1Pe 1: 6).

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

Comments

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  • A word of ponderous portent.

    December 29, 2011