How to Use ponderous in a Sentence

ponderous

adjective
  • And that’s not even the weirdest thing about the ponderous pachyderm’s voiceover.
    Jessica Kiang, Variety, 20 Feb. 2024
  • Or the slow, ponderous blockheads that got outplayed by the U.S.?
    Jonathan Clegg, WSJ, 4 Dec. 2022
  • Today, few read Spencer’s dense and ponderous books, and his ideas are rarely taught.
    Dan Falk, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Apr. 2020
  • To their right, on a column, is a ponderous, blood-orange face.
    Noah Shachtman, WIRED, 27 Dec. 2003
  • And to help slow me down to the pandemic’s strangely ponderous pace.
    Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, Forbes, 8 May 2021
  • The movie is an odd mix, childlike in tone and mind-set but also ponderous and slow, a deadly mix.
    Tim Grierson, Vulture, 26 July 2021
  • The data comes in at a ponderous couple of megabits per second (Mbps).
    Jamie Carter, Forbes, 18 July 2022
  • Critics found the paintings a bit ponderous and didn’t care for the muted gray color scheme.
    John Kelly, Washington Post, 20 Apr. 2018
  • This led to a slow, ponderous kind of warfare where armies would move short distances and then pause to set up new depots.
    Michael Peck, Forbes, 29 Sep. 2021
  • The Mirror and the Light is longer and more ponderous than its predecessors.
    Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 6 Apr. 2020
  • Here lies a ponderous abuse of consciousness: one of the most bizarre songs in hip-hop history.
    Jonathan Rowe, Spin, 22 Aug. 2023
  • His 6-foot-6 height, which affords him a better view of where the ball must go, would be a detriment if Herbert were gawky and ponderous.
    Tom Krasovic, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Sep. 2021
  • There was a sudden change from the ponderous infantry of theory to the light and speedy infantry of practice.
    Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2021
  • The ponderous choice to cleave the overstuffed Scorpion into Sides A and B results in two uneven suites of songs.
    Andy Hutchins, Time, 29 June 2018
  • At the Amtrak station, my headache worsened, and a ponderous fatigue set in.
    Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2023
  • To an astronomer, the longest night of the year occurs once in each hemisphere, as the earth makes its ponderous revolution around the sun.
    Caity Weaver, New York Times, 7 Feb. 2023
  • But turn a boat as if to land and these monsters would whip into the water with ponderous agility, almost as fast as a gecko.
    Warren Page, Field & Stream, 13 Nov. 2020
  • Two hippos sparred in a shallow pool, their ponderous jaws flashing in the sunlight.
    John Gurda, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 26 Jan. 2018
  • Predictably, the longer and heavier TourX wagon feels a bit more ponderous than the Regal Sportback.
    Joseph Capparella, Car and Driver, 19 July 2017
  • What should be like flicking a light switch is more like turning a cruise ship, a long and ponderous affair with a lot of hazards involved.
    Dean Burnett, The Cut, 11 Jan. 2018
  • This is realism with all the ponderous weight but little of the visual payoff.
    Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 25 Mar. 2022
  • Butler is more proficient at a ponderous pace than Marquette, and the press allowed the pace to quicken.
    David Woods, The Indianapolis Star, 27 Feb. 2022
  • The front door creaked and the winter cold slunk inside, a ponderous, invisible slug.
    Hazlitt, 7 June 2023
  • Things are so dire on Earth that in her quest to save it, the pace of Bae’s character can feel ponderous — despite her giving it her all as a performer.
    Daniel D'addario, Variety, 23 Dec. 2021
  • The whole thing looks kind of squat and ponderous, whereas the original Enterprise was narrow and sleek.
    Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, Ars Technica, 23 Apr. 2023
  • The bustle of interest in Congress, in turn, sparked a rare reaction within the opaque and ponderous offices of the V.A.
    New York Times, 11 Jan. 2022
  • My notes are just full of painfully ponderous lines of dialogue.
    The New Republic Staff, The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2021
  • If this all sounds a bit ponderous, blame me, not the ingeniousness of Ozick's novella.
    Claude Peck, Star Tribune, 16 Apr. 2021
  • Why fill chapters with ponderous quotations from writers who are, at the end of the day, talking about something else?
    Andrea Long Chu, Vulture, 7 Sep. 2021
  • There would be few exclamation points to follow, as the movie turned plodding and ponderous.
    Washington Post, 25 July 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ponderous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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