oppressive.
Burdensome or difficult to bear.
Meaning & usage
Burdensome or difficult to bear.
The oppressive tax laws made it difficult to start a small company.
Tyrannical or exercising unjust power.
oppressive smell
The oppressive land-owners kept a grip on the labourers.
Weighing heavily on the spirit; being quite intense, excessive or overwhelming.
Will the oppressive heat of summer never end?
Hot and humid.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree English oppress Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Old French -ifbor. Middle English -yf English -ive English oppressive From oppress + -ive.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.