Oppressive

//əˈpɹɛs.ɪv// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Burdensome or difficult to bear.

    "The oppressive tax laws made it difficult to start a small company."

  2. 2
    Tyrannical or exercising unjust power.

    "The oppressive land-owners kept a grip on the labourers."

  3. 3
    Weighing heavily on the spirit; being quite intense, excessive or overwhelming.

    "Will the oppressive heat of summer never end?"

  4. 4
    Hot and humid.
Adjective
  1. 1
    marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior wordnet
  2. 2
    weighing heavily on the senses or spirit wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
domineeringheavyhumidharshabsoluteabsolutist

Example

More examples

"He defies the present government which is no less oppressive than its predecessor."

Etymology

From oppress + -ive.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.