oppressive

comparative more oppressive · superlative most oppressive

1. Burdensome or difficult to bear.

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

   Synonyms: grinding

2. geopoliticsTyrannical or exercising unjust power.

   oppressive smell

   1 more example

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

   Synonyms: authoritarian, autocratic, bossy, coercive, commanding, controlling, demanding, despotic

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

   Will the oppressive heat of summer never end?

   5 more examples

   Without being slaves in fact, their condition is little better than vassalage in its most oppressive form.

   1807, The Literary Panorama 1807-01: Volume 1, Open Court Publishing Company, page 696

   The class of noblemen, who, at this particular epoch, had lost nothing of their primitive vigour, saw with pleasure the influence of the French depressed; but they suffered scarcely less from the absolute and oppressive influence which the Spaniards had acquired over them.

   1827, Katharine Cover Sabin, ESP and Dream Analysis, Open Court Publishing Company, page 379

   Their mantle was for a while worn unconsciously by him who showed to us Macbeth: and here again, in the deepening gloom of this tragic tale, we feel the oppressive influence of this invisible power, from the time we hear the prophetic rhymes, the spell has begun its work, and the clouds of misfortune blacken round us; and the fated course moves solemnly onward, irresistible and unerring as the progress of the sun, and soon to end in a night of horror.

   1847, Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature, Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, page 588

   With startling and oppressive force of illustration, he brings before us the fact, that in that grandest city of the earth, “if all the churches, chapels and buildings devoted to public worship, were filled to their last seat, there would be still left outside the buildings as many people as the whole population—men, women and children—in the cities of Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield and Birmingham.”

   1864, The Theological Review, Whitfield, Green & Son, page 552

   It had been one of those unnaturally still and oppressive days when scarcely a leaf quivers, and every breath of air seems charged with electricity. Suddenly the thunder began to growl. Before many minutes eveiy pine-needle was shaking with a fierce chill wind, and a torrent of rain swept down the valley and drenched us through to the skin.

   1887, Oscar Wilde, The Woman's World, Source Book Press,, page 75

4. climatologyHot and humid.

   Synonyms: humid, close