Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
heavy-handed \heavy-handed\ adj.
-
same as ham-fisted.
Syn: bumbling, bungling, butterfingered, ham-fisted, ham-handed, handless, left-handed.
-
unjustly harsh or domineering; as, incensed at the government's heavy-handed economic policies.
Syn: harsh, roughshod.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
also heavyhanded, 1630s, originally "weary" or "clumsy;" from heavy (adj.) + -handed. Sense of "overbearing" is first recorded 1883.
Wiktionary
a. 1 clumsy, awkward. 2 excessive, overdone. 3 simplistic, lacking subtlety or nuance. 4 overbearing; pushy and coercive. 5 extreme; unnecessarily forceful; harsh, oppressive, and cruel.
WordNet
adj. not skillful in physical movement especially with the hands; "a bumbling mechanic"; "a bungling performance"; "ham-handed governmental interference"; "could scarcely empty a scuttle of ashes, so handless was the poor creature"- Mary H. Vorse [syn: bumbling, bungling, butterfingered, ham-fisted, ham-handed, handless, left-handed]
unjustly domineering; "incensed at the government's heavy-handed economic economic policies"; "a manager who rode roughshod over all opposition" [syn: roughshod]
Usage examples of "heavy-handed".
Church, a heavy-handed man, was not able to establish a unified Church or to completely Nazify the Protestant congregations.
But none of the Arab states likes to suppress its people, and they worry that such heavy-handed actions might someday spark an outright revolt against the regime.
The goddess is too heavy-handed, too ensnared by emotion, to think with such devious, insidious clarity.
When you get in an argument with a group of outlaw motorcyclists, your chances of emerging unmaimed depend on the number of heavy-handed allies you can muster in the time it takes to smash a beer bottle.
Junior got up and Courter took hold of his arm, not heavy-handed but definitely like he thought his man might try to run.
Fiben's stunt at the Ape's Grape had brought dozens of new recruits out of the woodwork, galvanizing a part of the community that had had its fill of heavy-handed Gubru propaganda.
Fiben’s stunt at the Ape’s Grape had brought dozens of new recruits out of the woodwork, galvanizing a part of the community that had had its fill of heavy-handed Gubru propaganda.
It's like we're old friends and Mrs Barrington-Stone is like if Morrie and Sophie have just dropped in for tea and Morrie is telling us what the staff get up to in the loony bin on the hill, pinching the happy pills for themselves and being pretty heavy-handed to the inmates.
He could never understand Jeffers or Sergeov, who listened to that raucous, heavy-handed Clash Ceramic stuff while they worked.
Needless to say, he went about it in a heavy-handed way, and when the university's legal department began to receive his sullen letters, it responded by informing both Andrew's lawyer, and Randy, that anyone who used the university's computer system to create a commercial product had to split the proceeds with the university.
Oh, the decorations were done in a fairly heavy-handed, polychromed medieval style, but there was an attempt to suggest that maybe they weren't trying to make you worship a snuff movie.
It was probably the Eschaton's heavy-handed idea of a joke: a group called the space settlers' society had found themselves the sole proprietors of a frigid, barely terraformed asteroid, with a year's supply of oxygen and some heavy engineering equipment for company.
Not without trial, of course, but it is only with great difficulty that a trial can be made to go against the wishes of a heavy-handed officialdom, particularly one under the command of the Emperor of the vast Galactic Empire.