Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use oppressive in a sentence

39 example sentences · adjective

Oppressive means burdensome or difficult to bear. Example: “The oppressive tax laws made it difficult to start a small company.”

Examples of oppressive by meaning

adjectiveBurdensome or difficult to bear.

  • The oppressive tax laws made it difficult to start a small company.

adjectiveTyrannical or exercising unjust power.

  • The oppressive land-owners kept a grip on the labourers.

adjectiveWeighing heavily on the spirit; being quite intense, excessive or overwhelming.

  • Will the oppressive heat of summer never end?
  • 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.1912, Thomas Hardy, A Laodicean, Macmillan and Company, page 440
  • 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.1914, Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, The Macmillan Company,, page 158

More sentences with oppressive

  • Etatism is inherently oppressive and expansionist, breeding monism, intolerance, and hostility.From the entry etatism
  • For some, the structure of school life was oppressive.From the entry structure
  • The oppressive regime stays in power only as long as they manage to subvert the will of the people.From the entry subvert
  • Protagonists in social struggles, national liberation movements, and campaigns for citizens' rights, they invariably founded totalitarian, oppressive, and liberticidal regimes.From the entry liberticidal
  • The flies and mosquitoes that come with the oppressive summer heat haven’t arrived yet.2019 October 24, Dennis Webster, “'An indictment of South Africa': whites-only town Orania is booming”, in The Guardian, archived from the…. From the entry mosquito
  • Continuing oppressive summer heat made football practices and learning in smelly non-air-conditioned classrooms uncomforatable.2015, Ruth V. Burgess, J. David Burgess, Longing for Home. From the entry non-air-conditioned
  • Because he'd grown tired of Max's neediness, his leechiness, his oppressive presence.2012, Judith Arnold, Somebody's Dad. From the entry leechiness
  • "If they're real, then Nature there is warped, no doubt by oppressive dampness and heat."2006, Wendel Messer, The Conquest of Canada: A Novel of Discovery, Gravenhurst, O.N.: Breller Books, →ISBN, page 27. From the entry concoct
  • Anyone seen as being antipot is now considered to be ignorant, oppressive, and hypocritical.2003, Timmen L. Cermak, Marijuana: what's a parent to believe?, page 72. From the entry antipot
  • Mary is sister to the marginalized women who live unchronicled lives in oppressive situations.2000 June 17, Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”, in America, volume 182, number 21. From the entry rip
  • It starts to address the oppressive, inhuman and alienated aspects of this advancement.1994, EAR., Department of Architecture, School of the Built Environment, University of Edinburgh, page 146. From the entry oxymorous
  • The flowers, oppressive to the eyes, blazed with not a petal stirring, in a debauch of sun.1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC…. From the entry debauch
  • These standards have not just been oppressive but deadly.2022, W. David Marx, chapter 4, in Status and Culture, Viking, →ISBN. From the entry crinoline
  • Whether it's a crummy hometown, a crummy job, or a crummy family, Bruce punctuates his songs with some oppressive tension.2011, Randall E. Auxier, Douglas R. Anderson, Bruce Springsteen and Philosophy: Darkness on the Edge of Truth, Open Court, →ISBN, page 197. From the entry crummy
  • The oppressive heat has become insufferable in Syria – and as the temperature climbs, emotions get harder to contain.2011 June 7, “Chaos in Syria: Are Army Deserters Helping to Arm the Opposition?”, in TIME, New York, N.Y.: Time Warner Publishing, →ISSN…. From the entry insufferable
  • Charlotte Haze is spared Quilty's fate because she is, from the beginning, not a mirage but an oppressive, dull, untransfigurable reality.2010, Lucy Maddox, Nabokov's Novels in English, page 71. From the entry untransfigurable
  • Australians are conscious of multiple Otherings, both oppressive and affectionate.2000, Lesley Head, “Hunter-gatherers, Land, and the Past”, in Second Nature: The History and Implications of Australia as Aboriginal…. From the entry othering
  • But once out of Mongolia the oppressive atmosphere lifted immediately.1986, Bob Geldof, “Divers Bends”, in Is That It?, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 174. From the entry Erh-lien-hao-t'e
  • Ideas of democratic freedom periodically lived, and were periodically buried under years of oppressive sales resistance and dictatorial domination.1957, Charles E. Irvin, How to sell yourself, your ideas, your products, page 18. From the entry sales resistance
  • It was a day of muggy, oppressive heat.1943, Hallett Abend, My Life In China 1926-1941, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, page 204. From the entry Tangku
  • I reject the whole oppressive system that exists just so wealthy snobs can gorge at the trough of gluttony!” “Ah, come on, you earned it.2025 September 15, David A. Goodman, “The Trouble with Truffles” (18:42 from the start), in Futurama, season 10, episode 9, spoken by…. From the entry snarf
  • Amatonormativity is oppressive when it privileges members of one form of caring relationship at the expense of noncomformists, whose opportunities are thereby significantly worsened.2011, Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law, page 98. From the entry amatonormativity
  • If governments overact and become oppressive, the terrorists will have won, for their theory is that repression will eventually lead to revolution.1989, Susheela Bhan, Terrorism: an Annotated Bibliography, page 116. From the entry the terrorists will have won
  • The few who are more fortunate are rendered illiberal by their unjust privileges, and oppressive through fear of the awakening indignation of the masses.1917, Bertrand Russell, “Chapter II: Capitalism and the Wage System”, in Political Ideals. From the entry illiberal
  • Yet for a growing faction in the domain of culture, to complain about the pathetically low standard of the art on view is irrelevant at best, oppressive at worst.2022 September 23, Jason Farago, “The World’s Most Prestigious Art Exhibition Is Over. Maybe Forever.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry sharing is caring
  • Femonationalist discourse is increasingly utilized by both Hindu and Buddhist nationalist representatives to figuratively rescue women from what they deem are the oppressive structures of Islam.2021 September, Andrew Malji, “Gendered Islamophobia: The nature of Hindu and Buddhist nationalism in India and Sri Lanka”, in Studies in…. From the entry femonationalist
  • The rum punch which has freed me from my oppressive compulsive self the way a balloon lifts its gondola from the earth, was now working the room.2020, Louis A. Coppola, Good Medicine. From the entry ooh-wee
  • Reflectionism and its demand for "authenticity," argues Toril Moi, undermined the autonomy of literature to create its own fictional universes, be they "according to oppressive and objectionable ideological assumptions."2013, Tova Rosen, Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature, page 26. From the entry reflectionism
  • But while women were often not in touch with their own history—what feminists came to call, unetymologically but pertinently, 'herstory'—they were keenly aware of the immediate, oppressive past.2012, Gisela Kaplan, Contemporary Western European Feminism. From the entry unetymologically
  • It was not a peace that brought joy – it was one that created an oppressive tension like the calm between a major earthquake and the aftershock.2011, Raymond Gordon, The Ecclesiastical Chronicles, Volume Two: The Society, →ISBN, page 278. From the entry aftershock
  • Oppressive anaglyptas, sickly floral designs or ugly woodchip paper made us long for smooth painted walls that would not detract attention from our furniture or paintings.2002, Abigail Trow, Surface: Textures, Finishes and Materials for Stylish Interiors, page 61. From the entry anaglypta
  • Nanjing's streets are lined with poplars and sycamore trees ― some of which came from France ― that provide some relief from the oppressive summer temperatures.1995, Judy Bonavia, “The Lower Reaches: Hukou to the Yellow Sea”, in The Yangzi River, Hong Kong: The Guidebook Company Ltd., →ISBN…. From the entry Zijinshan
  • He sees their actions conditioned and to gome extent controlled by the influences of majestic inhuman powers, the genii of Eastern tales, huge, cloud-girt spirits of oppressive solemnity.1915, George A. Birmingham, Gossamer, Methuen Company, Limited, pages 284-285. From the entry inhuman
  • He was a known supporter of "emperorism," a term used to describe those who espoused others to give up their life for the emperor and to the oppressive military regime.1994, Kiyoshi Ōsawa, Marivi Nañagas, Go South, Japanese, page 104. From the entry emperorism

Meaning of oppressive

  1. adjective Burdensome or difficult to bear.
  2. adjective Tyrannical or exercising unjust power.
  3. adjective Weighing heavily on the spirit; being quite intense, excessive or overwhelming.

Full definition of oppressive

Questions about oppressive in a sentence

How do you use oppressive in a sentence?
Oppressive is used as an adjective. For example: “The oppressive tax laws made it difficult to start a small company.”
What is a short sentence with oppressive?
“It was a day of muggy, oppressive heat.”
What does oppressive mean?
Oppressive means burdensome or difficult to bear.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oppressive (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use oppressive in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/oppressive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.