Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ponderous in a sentence

17 example sentences · adjective

Ponderous means heavy, massive, weighty. Example: “The great elephant, when the cage was being placed, would, at a signal from its keeper, place its ponderous head against one side of the cage and push.”

Examples of ponderous by meaning

adjectiveHeavy, massive, weighty.

  • The great elephant, when the cage was being placed, would, at a signal from its keeper, place its ponderous head against one side of the cage and push.c. 1920, Edgar B. P. Darlington, chapter 4, in The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings

adjectiveSerious, onerous, oppressive.

  • Bax, now by Evelyn, now by the imposition of ponderous stupidity.1915, Virginia Woolf, chapter 19, in The Voyage Out

adjectiveClumsy, unwieldy, or slow, especially due to weight.

  • Slowly, through an increasing glow that lighted land and water alike, the leviathan of the deep made her ponderous progress to the hill-encircled harbor.1915, Samuel Hopkins Adams, chapter 10, in Little Miss Grouch
  • Following his steps . . . came two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout and ponderous, the other rosy cheeked and nimble.1919, Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens

More sentences with ponderous

  • He highlights the stylistic conceits and ambiguity that often turn quite ordinary statements into ponderous pedantics.1992, College Student Journal, page 86. From the entry pedantics
  • The Moscow experts on treffs perform their duty with ponderous, often ridiculous, awkwardness.1955, David J. Dallin, Soviet Espionage, page 495. From the entry treff
  • Everything was lost to sight in that ponderous atrament which precedes the dawn.1927, Reginald Wright Kauffman, “Pursuit” (chapter XXVIII), in Blind Man, New York: Duffield & Company, page 268. From the entry atrament
  • The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be.2006, Cormac McCarthy, The Road. From the entry counterspectacle
  • The lane had not been designed for ponderous trucks.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 217. From the entry scrabble
  • Like a monument lay the bright brown, ponderous coffin.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 6, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC. From the entry lay out
  • Elcor speech is ponderous and monotone.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Elcor Codex entry. From the entry infrasound
  • The ponderous beast had spent the summer eating tuckahoe roots, the autumn eating acorns and nuts, and was now as heavy as two stout men.1996, Karen Mueller Coombs, Sarah on Her Own. From the entry tuckahoe
  • The offices of the betoga-ed and august lawmakers of the upper house Congress lend themselves to other uses than writing statutes and drafting ponderous resolutions.1927 August 19, “Proud Mother Knows the Day and the Hour When Historic Event Was Consummated, and While the Circumstances Were…. From the entry betoga-ed
  • I feel, indeed, that something very ponderous, and solemn, and authoritative, and learned, and wise, and owlish, and erudite, ought to be said.1914, Julian Leonard Street, Abroad at home; American ramblings, observations, and adventure of Julian Street. From the entry owlish
  • England were ponderous with ball in hand, their runners static when taking the ball and their lines obvious, while their front row struggled badly in the scrum.2011 October 1, Tom Fordyce, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 16-12 Scotland”, in BBC Sport. From the entry static
  • Mata was afforded to much space by Santos and when the ponderous Per Mertesacker missed his cross Lampard timed his arrival perfectly to head past Wojciech Szczesny.2011 October 29, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 3 - 5 Arsenal”, in BBC Sport. From the entry wastefulness
  • Currents of darkside air would begin to flow through the low passes into the relative warmth of the marsh country, and the ponderous wheel of air would roll again.1988 September, M[ary] J[ane] Engh, “[Preface to ‘The Second Turn’]”, in Wheel of the Winds, 1st mass market edition, New York, N.Y.: Tor…. From the entry darkside

Meaning of ponderous

  1. adjective Heavy, massive, weighty.
  2. adjective Serious, onerous, oppressive.
  3. adjective Clumsy, unwieldy, or slow, especially due to weight.

Full definition of ponderous

Questions about ponderous in a sentence

How do you use ponderous in a sentence?
Ponderous is used as an adjective. For example: “The great elephant, when the cage was being placed, would, at a signal from its keeper, place its ponderous head against one side of the cage and push.”
What is a short sentence with ponderous?
“Elcor speech is ponderous and monotone.”
What does ponderous mean?
Ponderous means heavy, massive, weighty.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ponderous (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 ponderous in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ponderous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.