heavy-handed
heavy-handed adjective: clumsy; awkward.
Adjective
heavy-handed (comparative heavier-handed, superlative heaviest-handed)
- Clumsy; awkward.
- Some people say, 'I can't make pastry, I'm too heavy-handed.'2012, Margaret Powell, The Downstairs Cookbook, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- cack-handed, ham-handed, ham-fisted, maladroit
- Excessive; overdone.
- Do not be too heavy-handed with the salt.
- However, recently I got a little heavy-handed with the red pepper flakes.2015, Suzanne Lenzer, Truly Madly Pizza, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- OTT, over the top
- Lacking subtlety or nuance.
- ...punk “music has been, and still is, one of the most heavy-handed genres of music there is. Unfortunately the topics of such heavy-handed songs are almost always seeped in left wing propaganda, bumper sticker rallying calls and oversimplifications of otherwise complex topics."2005, Nicholas Rombes, The Ramones' Ramones, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- ham-handed, ham-fisted, unsubtle, on the nose
- Overbearing, coercive; unnecessarily forceful; harsh, oppressive.
- “Heavy-handed, huh? Is that by any chance your way of telling me that I'm a bad communicator?" "No, it's my way of telling you that you obviously haven't shaken the take-charge attitude."2014, Jayne Ann Krentz, River Road, →ISBN
- I cite how ineffective heavy-handed training methods are due to the physiological state of high arousal and avoidance behaviors they cause in dogs.2015, John D. Visconti, Fetch More Dollars For Your Dog Training Business, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- bossy, hard-handed, iron-handed, iron-fisted, brutal, cruel, draconian, overstrict, authoritarian, autocratic
heavy-handed meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada
heavy-handed in Tamil
- அருவருப்பான, தடுமாற்றமுடைய, அமைப்பில் குறைபாடுடைய, அல்லற்படுத்துகிற
heavy-handed in Malayalam
- awkward, clumsy, maladroit
- ചാതുര്യമില്ലാത്ത, ചാതുര്യരഹിതമായ, കെെകാര്യം ചെയ്യാൻ വശമില്ലാത്ത, കെെമിടുക്കില്ലാത്ത, അദക്ഷ, പടുപണി ചെയ്യുന്ന
- insensitive, oppressive, overbearing
- പീഡക, ക്രൂരമായ, അമിതബലപ്രയോഗിയായ, വികാരസ്പർശമില്ലാത്ത, നിർവികാരനായ, ദുർന്നയനായ
heavy-handed in Kannada
- ಒಡ್ಡೊಡ್ಡಾದ, ಒರಟು
Examples of heavy-handed in a sentence
- Polls suggest, however, that Beijing’s heavy-handed ways might be backfiring and driving voters to embrace Ms.2020 January 6, Raymond Zhong, “Awash in Disinformation Before Vote, Taiwan Points Finger at China”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC...
- Crowther also distanced the BTP from the heavy-handed approach to the lockdown that other police forces have been accused in the national media of taking.2020 April 22, “Network News: BTP chief pays tribute to rail staff and BTP officers”, in Rail, page 10:
Synonyms of heavy-handed
25 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of heavy-handed
| comparative | heavier-handed |
|---|---|
| superlative | heaviest-handed |
| alternative form | heavyhanded |
Origin of heavy-handed
From heavy + hand + -ed, literally “having a heavy hand”. Compare Middle English hevitime, heviteme (“burdensome, grievous, grave”), from Old English hefiġtīme, hefiġtȳme (“grievous, wearisome, tedious, troublesome”).
Words formed from heavy-handed
Questions about heavy-handed
- What does heavy-handed mean?
- Heavy-handed means clumsy; awkward.
- What is heavy-handed in Tamil?
- Heavy-handed in Tamil is அருவருப்பான, தடுமாற்றமுடைய, அமைப்பில் குறைபாடுடைய. See Heavy-handed meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use heavy-handed in a sentence?
- Polls suggest, however, that Beijing’s heavy-handed ways might be backfiring and driving voters to embrace Ms.
- What part of speech is heavy-handed?
- Heavy-handed is an adjective.
Words near heavy-handed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: heavy-handed (page history and authors); heavy-handed (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); heavy-handed (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); heavy-handed (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-heavy-handed.wav.
Cite this entry: “heavy-handed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heavy-handed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.