CUMBROUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does cumbrous mean? 

• CUMBROUS (adjective)
  The adjective CUMBROUS has 1 sense:

1. difficult to handle or use especially because of size or weight

  Familiarity information: CUMBROUS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CUMBROUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Difficult to handle or use especially because of size or weight

Synonyms:

cumbersome; cumbrous

Context example:

cumbrous protective clothing

Similar:

unmanageable; unwieldy (difficult to use or handle or manage because of size or weight or shape)

 Context examples 

These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Now to the historical, for as Madam Mina write not in her stenography, I must, in my cumbrous old fashion, that so each day of us may not go unrecorded.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Yet I admit that there may very well be places where an expert human climber may reach the summit, and yet a cumbrous and heavy animal be unable to descend.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She appeared to me to take great care of the Doctor, and to like him very much, though I never thought her vitally interested in the Dictionary: some cumbrous fragments of which work the Doctor always carried in his pockets, and in the lining of his hat, and generally seemed to be expounding to her as they walked about.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She had her doubts about it from the beginning, for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and cumbrous costume of the last century.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes—Christian and Pagan—her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)