Word of the Day

: July 5, 2010

ponderous

adjective PAHN-duh-rus

What It Means

1 : of very great weight

2 : unwieldy or clumsy because of weight and size

3 : oppressively or unpleasantly dull : lifeless

ponderous in Context

"Electronic texts can be updated at the speed of a download rather than waiting for the next edition of a ponderous textbook." (St. Petersburg Times [Florida], June 6, 2010)

Did You Know?

"Ponderous" is ultimately from the Latin word for "weight," namely, "pondus" (which also gave us "ponder" and "preponderance" and is related to "pound"). We adopted "ponderous" with the literal sense "heavy" from Anglo-French "ponderus" in the 15th century, and early on we appended a figurative sense of "weighty," that is, "serious" or "important." But we stopped using the "serious" sense of "ponderous" around 200 years ago -- perhaps because in the meantime we'd imposed on it a different figurative sense of "dull and lifeless," which we still use today.