How to Use ponderous in a Sentence

ponderous

adjective
  • To their right, on a column, is a ponderous, blood-orange face.
    — Noah Shachtman, WIRED, 27 Dec. 2003
  • Today, few read Spencer’s dense and ponderous books, and his ideas are rarely taught.
    — Dan Falk, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Apr. 2020
  • And that’s not even the weirdest thing about the ponderous pachyderm’s voiceover.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 20 Feb. 2024
  • 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 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
  • My notes are just full of painfully ponderous lines of dialogue.
    — The New Republic Staff, The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2021
  • There is the ponderous march of normalcy and daily life.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Mar. 2026
  • 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
  • Two hippos sparred in a shallow pool, their ponderous jaws flashing in the sunlight.
    — John Gurda, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 26 Jan. 2018
  • The data comes in at a ponderous couple of megabits per second (Mbps).
    — Jamie Carter, Forbes, 18 July 2022
  • These questions are left unasked in favor of broad, ponderous statements about good versus evil.
    — Marya E. Gates, IndieWire, 21 Nov. 2024
  • And when the outcome is slow, ponderous and predictable, the risk to set up in that shape becomes even less worth taking.
    — Thom Harris, The Athletic, 22 Dec. 2024
  • Not for the first time this season, Liverpool’s build-up was ponderous.
    — Andy Jones, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2026
  • This is realism with all the ponderous weight but little of the visual payoff.
    — Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 25 Mar. 2022
  • The performances have largely been stodgy and ponderous.
    — The Athletic Uk Staff, New York Times, 2 Jan. 2026
  • Much of the show is given to ponderous historical segues.
    — Ruby Tandoh, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
  • 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
  • There would be few exclamation points to follow, as the movie turned plodding and ponderous.
    — Washington Post, 25 July 2019
  • With their colossal bodies and ponderous feet, elephants have never struck me as masters of hide-and-seek.
    — Chris Schalkx, Travel + Leisure, 16 Mar. 2025
  • The front door creaked and the winter cold slunk inside, a ponderous, invisible slug.
    — Hazlitt, 7 June 2023
  • Gone was the ponderous, confused football England have played under him so far.
    — Jack Pitt-Brooke, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2025
  • At the Amtrak station, my headache worsened, and a ponderous fatigue set in.
    — Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2023
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • If this all sounds a bit ponderous, blame me, not the ingeniousness of Ozick's novella.
    — Claude Peck, Star Tribune, 16 Apr. 2021
  • The Mirror and the Light is longer and more ponderous than its predecessors.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 6 Apr. 2020
  • 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
  • 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

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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