What is "oppressive"

Usage examples of "oppressive".

He was an old man whose body was collapsing under the oppressive weight of a rotting, wasting disease, whose mind was stiff with coagulated dream-emissions.

The day I knew you loved me we had lain Deep in Coill Doraca down by Gleann na Scath Unknown to each other till suddenly I saw You in the shadow, knew oppressive pain Stopping my heart, and there you did remain In dreadful beauty fair without a flaw, Blinding the eyes that yet could not withdraw Till wiMore between us drove the wind and rain.

The copyhold was also subject to a variety of grievous taxes, which the lord had the privilege, upon many occasions, of imposing - such as aids, reliefs, primer seisin, wardship, escheats for felony and want of heirs, and many more, altogether so exorbitant and oppressive as often totally to ruin the tenant and rob him of almost all interest in his property.

They had endured because they had hopehope that all the suffering would lead to a better life on a new world, free of the oppressive rule of the Wandsmen and the burden of their army of Farer dependents, which grew larger with each generation.

The minutes seemed to drag along with leaden feet, and the quiet, the solemn hush, that brooded over all -- big, as it were, with a coming fate, was most oppressive to the spirits.

Power is irresponsible and inamissible, and however it may be abused, or however corrupt and oppressive may be its exercise, there is no human redress.

Once they are free from their oppressive government, they reinvent Mexico as a nurturing landscape that obliterates the kleptocracy it actually is.

It was probably sheer irrational instinct which made us dim our single torch--tempted no longer by the decadent and sinister sculptures that leered menacingly from the oppressive walls--and which softened our progress to a cautious tiptoeing and crawling over the increasingly littered floor and heaps of debris.

This oppressive place, designed in the Pannovalan fashion, was carved from the clay which lay beneath the loess, and lined with lead to waist level, with stone above.

He despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the eye of reason.

As I now close this long labor and send forth the result, the oppressive sense of responsibility which fills me is relieved by the consciousness that I have herein written nothing as a bigoted partisan, nothing in a petty spirit of opinionativeness, but have intended every thought for the furtherance of truth, the honor of God, the good of man.

Plants in macrame hangers, pictures, and a stained-glass image of Kokopelli, the flute player, in the window kept the orderliness from being oppressive.

The heat of the little room was oppressive, despite the air conditioning and the oxy vent.

She was no pietist, but there is nowadays coming into existence a class of persons who substitute for the old religious acerbity a narrow and oppressive zeal for good works of purely human sanction, and to this order Miss Lant might be said to belong.

Cloaked by oppressive spiritual darkness and silent as a black cloud, Ba-al Rafar, the Prince of Babylon, floated along.