Word.ws English Dictionary

make heavy weather of

make heavy weather of verb: to overcomplicate (something); to make (things) appear worse than they are.

Verb

make heavy weather of (third-person singular simple present makes heavy weather of, present participle making heavy weather of, simple past and past participle made heavy weather of)

  1. (transitive) To overcomplicate (something); to make (things) appear worse than they are.
    • Philosophers, possibly with justification, make heavy weather of the concept of causation, but to a working biologist causation is a rather simple statistical concept.1982, Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, Oxford University Press

Forms of make heavy weather of

third-person singular presentmakes heavy weather of
present participlemaking heavy weather of
past participlemade heavy weather of
pastmade heavy weather of
alternative formmake heavy going of

Questions about make heavy weather of

What does make heavy weather of mean?
Make heavy weather of means to overcomplicate (something); to make (things) appear worse than they are.
What part of speech is make heavy weather of?
Make heavy weather of is a verb.
What is the past tense of make heavy weather of?
The past tense of make heavy weather of is made heavy weather of.

Words near make heavy weather of in the dictionary

  1. make head nor tail of
  2. make head or tail of
  3. make headway
  4. make heavy going of
  5. make heavy weather
  6. make heavy weather of
  7. make history
  8. make interesting
  9. make into
  10. make it
  11. make it big

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make heavy weather of (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.

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