Contextualizebeta

heavy-handed

adj

Etymology

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”).

  1. inherited from *handuz✻
  2. inherited from *handu✻
  3. inherited from hand
  4. inherited from hond
  5. formed as heavy-handed — “heavy + hand + -ed”

Definitions

  1. Clumsy

    Clumsy; awkward.

    • Some people say, 'I can't make pastry, I'm too heavy-handed.'

  2. Excessive

    Excessive; overdone.

    • Do not be too heavy-handed with the salt.
    • However, recently I got a little heavy-handed with the red pepper flakes.

  3. Lacking subtlety or nuance.

  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. Overbearing, coercive

      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."
      • I cite how ineffective heavy-handed training methods are due to the physiological state of high arousal and avoidance behaviors they cause in dogs.

The neighborhood

Derived

heavy-handedly, heavy-handedness

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for heavy-handed. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA