Cumbrous means heavy, awkward, or difficult to manage, especially because of size, complexity, or inefficiency.

Core meaning

  • Basic definition : Cumbrous describes something unwieldy, hard to handle, or burdensome, either physically (big and heavy) or figuratively (complicated, slow, or inconvenient).
  • It is a more formal or literary word and overlaps strongly with cumbersome in meaning.

Nuances and shades of meaning

  • Physical sense: Something large, heavy, and hard to move, such as “cumbrous machinery” or a “cumbrous piece of furniture.”
  • Figurative sense: Systems, procedures, rules, or language that are overly complex, slow, or inefficient, like a “cumbrous legal process” or “cumbrous bureaucracy.”
  • Older/obsolete senses include “causing hindrance or obstruction” and “troublesome or vexatious.”

Synonyms and opposites

  • Common synonyms: cumbersome, unwieldy, clumsy, awkward, ponderous, bulky, heavy, ungainly.
  • Rough opposites: handy, practical, convenient, light, manageable.

Usage tips

  • Register: Sounds formal or literary , so it appears more in essays, older literature, or elevated prose than in everyday speech.
  • In many modern contexts, “cumbersome” is more common; you can usually swap “cumbrous” with “cumbersome” without changing the basic meaning.

Example sentence: “The cumbrous regulations slowed the project and frustrated everyone involved.”

TL;DR: Cumbrous = unwieldy, heavy, or overcomplicated in a way that makes something hard to use, move, or deal with, often in more formal or literary English.

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