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Cumbersome   Listen
adjective
cumbersome  adj.  
1.
Burdensome or hindering, as a weight or drag; embarrassing; vexatious; cumbrous. "To perform a cumbersome obedience."
2.
Not easily managed; as, a cumbersome contrivance or machine. "He holds them in utter contempt, as lumbering, cumbersome, circuitous."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cumbersome" Quotes from Famous Books



... of old English verbiage, with quaint terms and cumbersome repetition, the stipulations of this contract of were concealed, there can be no doubt that they purported and designed to "ingage" that "the Good ship MAY-FLOWER of Yarmouth, of 9 score tuns burthen, whereof for the present viage Thomas Joanes is Master," should make the "viage" as a colonist-transport, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... and it is true that the rebel army on that account was more easily moved than our own. It was one of the disadvantages of too liberal a government that our movements for two years were weighed down with these cumbersome trains; and even after so long an experience of their evil it was with strong feelings of opposition that the reduction ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... still undoubtedly young-looking, and in this I was true to the incoming type of successful man. Our fathers appeared staid at six and thirty. Clothes, of course, made some difference, and my class and generation did not wear the sombre and cumbersome kind, with skirts and tails; I patronized a tailor in New York. My chestnut hair, a little darker than my father's had been, showed no signs of turning grey, although it was thinning a little at the crown of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... I am, a servant of the Sphinx, have erected the shrine of my household gods in the beautiful town, which lies in its shadow and is held in its paw. Even now is the Sphinx weaving on the web of my destiny. I hope I may be spared the cumbersome burden of the wealth of a Rockefeller, who is said to possess a billion dollars for every hair on his head. One thousandth part of his wealth would ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... bony frame of Bastin bump into the bottom of one of them and reflected, not without venom, that it served him right as he was the fount and origin of our woes. Two stinking magicians, wearing on their heads undress editions of their court cages, since these were too cumbersome for active work of the sort, and painted all over with various pigments, were just about to swing me after him into the same, or another canoe, when something happened. I did not know what it was, but as a result, my captors left hold of me so that I fell to ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... of stage makeup, for men as well as for women, and for every known character part as well as the "straight" makeup for youth. To put all the expert professional makeup knowledge into this book would be to practically crowd out everything else or so enlarge the volume as to make it cumbersome. To avoid this and at the same time meet a strong public demand, I have in contemplation a book devoted exclusively to this important subject, that shall post a world of waiting aspirants for stage honors in every detail of the art of correct makeup. Meanwhile, the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... time of which I speak most of the traveling was done by stage. Now railroads unite the different portions with links of steel, and make traveling less cumbersome and laborious. There was one of the party, however, who did not complain, but rather enjoyed the ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... deck house, and, leaving the girl to hold herself upright as best she could, began to hack it loose. It was quite an affair, cork-lined, and evidently capable of sustaining considerable weight when once launched in the water, but cumbersome and hard to handle on deck, more particularly ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... picter of the little feller in front of the stoop, an' put in Turk. If so be as somethin' happens to-night, I sh'd want to show her the plans in the mornin'; an' if she should ax me whose little feller it was, it would be sort o' cumbersome to tell her, an' I sh'd have to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... is in course of actual evolution, which, if the life that animates it be a healthy one, is appropriating and assimilating to itself what it anywhere finds congenial to its own life, multiplying its resources, increasing its wealth; while at the same time it is casting off useless and cumbersome forms, dismissing from its vocabulary words of which it finds no use, rejecting from itself by a re-active energy the foreign and heterogeneous, which may for a while have been forced upon it. I would not assert that in the process of all this it does not make mistakes; in the desire to simplify ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... nature of this issue, which he illustrated with the example of the cumbersome process involved in putting a copy of a scientific database on a LAN in LC's science reading room. He also acknowledged that LC needs help and could enlist the energies and talents of Workshop participants in thinking through a number of ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... physics, and the branches of learning necessary to complete the education of a young man of his social position and mental capacity, were doubtless embraced in his course of study. His use of the Latin tongue was fluent, though his style has been criticised as cumbersome and wanting in elegance; certainly his writings abound in diffuse generalities, a multiplicity of repetitions, and a vast array of citations from Scripture and the classics which render his unexpurgated manuscripts wearisome ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... reason, though they are cumbersome weapons under ordinary circumstances, and make a detachment equipped with them much more likely to be seen, lances were retained by many of the British cavalry regiments, just as the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... the old man began to understand that if he held on to the prize he would be left far behind in the chase by our people, because it was far too cumbersome to be carried at a rapid pace, and then ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis

... conceive some brand new, clean, slick planet up in space, with crowds of perfect and convenient people on it, and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great, soft, beautiful dew or ideal on this one. We want to take this heavy, inconvenient, cumbersome, real planet that we have, and see what can be done with it, and by the people on it, what can be done by these same people, whose signs one goes by down the street, with Smith & Smith, Gowns, with Clapp & Clapp, Butchers, with W.H. Riley ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... rather large, cumbersome pasteboard box in the corner, which Diggs passed up to him the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... inhabitants of Brisbane overloaded me with kind contributions, much of which, however, to avoid any unnecessary increase to my luggage, I found myself compelled to decline or leave behind; so that I had to forego the advantage of many useful and desirable articles, from their being too cumbersome for my limited means of carriage, and therefore interfering with ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... of cold steel. We had with us four Winchester repeating rifles, besides half a dozen Martinis. I armed myself with one of the repeaters — my own; an excellent weapon for this kind of work, where great rapidity of fire is desirable, and fitted with ordinary flap-sights instead of the cumbersome sliding mechanism which they generally have. Mr Mackenzie took another, and the two remaining ones were given to two of his men who understood the use of them and were noted shots. The Martinis and some rifles of Mr Mackenzie's were served out, together ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... was a stock joke with us. It was a particularly cumbersome vehicle, with heaven only knows what type of body. It might have been capable of twenty miles an hour on the flat, but that would be the extreme limit of its powers. "You fellows," he had explained to us one day, "have taken to motoring for the fun of flying ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... wisdom, and goodness, is it not likely that I shall feel encouraged to the commission of crimes when I find them sanctioned by such an example? Although unable to discover the value of so many mysteries which I cannot understand, or of so many fanciful and cumbersome ceremonies prescribed by the church, am I, on that account, to be denounced as a more dangerous citizen than those who persecute, torment, and destroy every one of their fellow-creatures who does not think and act at their dictation? The evident ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... stopped to ask for matches and to yarn a while in the warm sunshine of the clearing. St. Vincent and Borg were accommodating them, the latter for the most part in meditative monosyllables. Just to the rear, by the cabin-door, Bella was washing clothes. The tub was a cumbersome home-made affair, and half-full of water, was more than a fair match for an ordinary woman. The correspondent noticed her struggling with it, and stepped back quickly to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... these three big boxes are the ones the professor wants watched?" he observed, pointing as he spoke to several cumbersome cases that stood in a ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... will be followed by START III and IV, as nations who claim ownership of nuclear weapons realize ownership has a high cost and marginal payoff. However, progress will be slow due to the immense importance of achieving symmetry during nuclear disarmament and the cumbersome and exacting safeguards associated with the disarmament process. Therefore, for the foreseeable future the threat of nuclear war must be addressed even though it will be less likely than before. The spectrum of national security challenges will expand as the ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... the primitive passion for violence and blood which found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story, and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which the new ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... out of that knowledge to love him, and to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection."[108] This rather cumbersome definition shows how fully Milton was possessed of the Puritan spirit, which then controlled England, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... contains twenty-four sections, but is by no means cumbersome. It is, in many respects, the most important piece of legislation that has been had in Congress for the past twenty years. It applies to common carriers engaged in the transportation of passengers or property wholly by railroad, or partly ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... half a yard in height, seemed to place her face near the middle of her body; her stomach was compressed into a stiff case of whalebone, which checked respiration, and deprived her almost of the power of eating; while a pair of cumbersome hoops, placed on her hips, gave to her petticoats the amplitude of a small elliptical, inflated balloon. Under these strange accoutrements, it would, at first sight, almost have puzzled BUFFON himself to decide in what species such a female animal ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... few steps to a pointed door set in the heavy stone. From a nail he took down a lantern of heavy, fretted brass and lighted it, not without some difficulty, for his hands were still trembling. Then he took from the black a cumbersome key which he fitted into the lock and ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... method of crossing oceans is adopted, it will of course mean the end of that fantastic medieval anachronism, the Navy. No need for billion-dollar aircraft carriers, battleships, drydocks and all the other cumbersome junk that keeps those boats and things afloat. Give the ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison

... down, the ray of the electric lamp always showing more steps ahead, until at last these terminated in a level, arched passage, curving sharply to the right. Two paces more brought us to a doorway, less, than four feet high, approached by two wide steps. A blackened door, having a most cumbersome and complicated ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... have been dimly conscious of this, always insisting on wearing heavy and cumbersome garments, quilted so strongly as to defy the thrust of a dagger. A monarch who goes about in habitual fear of assassination betrays his knowledge that he has failed to win the love ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... hoisting use a jig shown in Fig. 46. The thimble shown in Fig. 47 is made by splicing the rope to the thimble at running part of halyard and passing back and forth through cleat and thimble. This gives a quick and strong purchase and does away with cumbersome blocks of the old-fashioned jig. The jib-sheet leads aft to the steering cockpit. The main-sheet ends in a jig of a single block and a single block with becket. Be sure that your sail covers are large enough—the sail maker ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... seeds from the staple practically thrust cotton out of common use. In India a primitive and cumbersome set of rollers called a churka partially cleaned India cotton. A Yankee schoolmaster, Eli Whitney, set King Cotton on a throne by his invention of the cotton-gin in 1792. This comparatively simple but inestimable invention completely revolutionized ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... representative—possibly more possibly less of others in the Clan. Any scintilla or fleck of truth I can pick off from a revolutionary, I take but I will not take him. The same is true of a standpatter or reactionary. I want to know all he knows. If I take his truth I can use it, if I take him I will find him cumbersome. Life is too short to spend ten hours on him when ten minutes would do as much with some one who could listen or converse or with whom one could exchange thoughts and actions instead of ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... then away with your high and life-long judges, or at least let them be elected by the people and for very brief terms. Let grand juries be voted a humbug, and trial by jury a nuisance. Let electoral colleges be abolished as meaningless and cumbersome anomalies. Let the President be the direct representative of a mighty people, and act without let or hindrance—only let him act with gigantic energy and swift execution. Let senatorial terms be dependent upon changing legislative majorities. In fact, let the two ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... go," she merrily replied. "I could not play worth listening to—this you must admit. It was just an expensive, cumbersome ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... dragged the cumbersome thing all over Russia and played it in recitals with amazing success. In 1903, when Mr. Koussevitzky was twenty-nine (he's sixty-eight now but looks a mettlesome fifty), the Czar decorated him—the only instance in history of a decoration ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... appeared, closely veiled, but the Christian mothers invariably came; that is, the Albanian Christians from the outlying villages. Very quaint are these women in a most picturesque costume and carrying their infants in a cumbersome and unwieldy cradle slung on their backs. It was a very varied assortment of babies which was presented to the doctor, many of the Turkish children being so emaciated and such a mass of repulsive sores, that many were sent away as too weak. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... his darling cousin, the King's only child, poor Giglio was perfectly contented; nor did he envy his uncle the royal robes and sceptre, the great hot uncomfortable throne of state, and the enormous cumbersome crown in which that monarch appeared from morning till night. King Valoroso's portrait has been left to us; and I think you will agree with me that he must have been sometimes RATHER TIRED of his velvet, and his diamonds, and his ermine, and his grandeur. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... done in a social note. Often, upon her marriage a woman includes her maiden name in her signature, thus, "Marion Ames Morris." A hyphen is not used. The four-storied name, as "Marion Helen Ames Morris," is too cumbersome ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... now our only hope, as far as we knew, for obtaining lodgings, and we could scarcely restrain our delight when we were told we could be accommodated there until Monday morning. It was an intense relief to us to be separated from our cumbersome luggage, and we must say that Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie did all in their power to make us comfortable and happy and to make us feel at home. We contented ourselves with some light refreshments which to some non-pedestrians might have appeared decidedly heavy, and then decided to see all ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... yellow striped lion-thing with great saber teeth just as it was about to spring upon Obergatz who had futilely emptied his rifle into it—the last shot—his final cartridge. For another day they had carried the now useless rifles; but at last they had discarded them and thrown away the cumbersome bandoleers, as well. How they had managed to survive during the ensuing week she could never quite understand, and then the Ho-don had come upon them and captured her. Obergatz had escaped—she was living it all over again. Doubtless he was dead unless he had been able to reach this ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... electro-magnetic induction had made possible the means of easily generating electricity, the next natural step was to find a means of storing it or accumulating it. This, however, proved no easy matter, and as yet a practical storage or secondary battery that is neither too cumbersome, too fragile, nor too weak in its action has not been invented. If a satisfactory storage battery could be made, it is obvious that its revolutionary effects could scarcely be overestimated. In the single field ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... principles and forms of the new law, the lawyers gradually brought all business before the king's judges, and abandoned the ancient simple and popular judicature. After this manner, the formalities of justice, which, though they appear tedious and cumbersome, are found requisite to the support of liberty in all monarchical governments, proved at first, by a combination of causes, very advantageous to royal authority in England. [FN [r] Madox, Hist. of the Exch. p. 65. Glanv. lib. 12. cap. 1. 7. LL. Hen. I. Sec. 31, apud Wilkins, p. 248. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... elect their own State officers. Whether the conventions of the people are called by law of Congress or by proclamation of the President, would seem to be immaterial, though the latter seems the least cumbersome method. Thus the rebel States would pass from rebel forms to constitutional ones, in a legal and formal manner. Sooner or later this must be done, even if, for a time, provisional governments are instituted; for no Congressional government can be an elective government, and hence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... pretty Fellows in Bristol are numbers, some Who so modish are grown, that they think plain sense cumbersome; And lest they should seem to be queer or ridiculous, They affect to believe neither God ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the gate, the black woman re-entered the house, and as briskly as her cumbersome size would permit, began preparations for her mistress' visit. Milk and butter were taken from the safe; eggs, from the India rush basket that hung against the wall; and flour, from the half barrel that stood ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... efforts, however, it was soon evident that the cumbersome nature of the huge parachute would prevent its being carried up quite so high as the inventor desired. Mr. Cocking had stipulated for an elevation of 7,000 feet, and, as things were, only 5,000 feet ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... she let me back down the whole length of the room, not half turning away as so many princesses do after the first few steps, so as to curtail that very inconvenient exit. However, a day dress is never so long and cumbersome as an evening ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... off his leather coat, following the example of the hoplites, who swiftly divested themselves of such cumbersome equipment as could readily be removed. Then, while the shouts of the thwarted pursuers swelled like a demonic chorus, and while feathers of steam crept under the great door, Hero Giles spun about and, with his short yellow hair ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... for Kayans to kill any of their captives after the short excitement of the battle is over. The attacking party, even though it has gained a decisive victory, usually returns with all speed, but in good order, to its boats, carrying with it through the jungle all the loot that is not too cumbersome for rapid portage, especially old beads, gongs, and brass-ware; for they are always in danger of being cut off by a party of their enemies, rallied and reinforced by parties from neighbouring friendly villages. Still more are they liable to be pursued and cut off, if the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... instant the shooting squads tramped in, nearer and nearer, until they halted opposite the condemned. Maximilian then perceived which squad was to be his own. It numbered seven tiradores and a yellow, beardless officer. The seven were low, cumbersome, tawny, and they shuffled awkwardly. Their stripling chief thrust out his stomach, and he handled his large sword with an unaccustomed flourish. The pompous severity was, after all, only insolence. He had need to keep guard on his importance; he did not wish to ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... which I was fortunate enough to secure, had come down to meet us at the railroad station, and was as muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more passengers were waiting for us at the inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath, in the usual self-communicative voice, looking the while at his mouldy harness as if it were to that he was ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... the desire than they appeared.... Such beautiful flowers no human eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything was real.... I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight, nothing cumbersome, nothing.... I passed along through this garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to me, each and every one seemed to be my friend.... I then thought of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet some one of them, when like ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... never had a more sincere and faithful votary than Cavour, found no favour with Garibaldi at any period of his life. Its hampering restrictions, its slow processes, irritated his mind, intolerant of constraint, and he failed to see that this cumbersome mechanism still gives the best, if not the only, guarantee for the maintenance of freedom. The sudden transition of Southern Italy from a corrupt despotism to free institutions brought with it a train of evils, but there was no alternative. If Italy was to be one, all ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... were fastened on his crown in the long black hair, and his hunting shirt, leggings, and moccasins were bright with different colored beads and fringes. In the red sash which passed around his waist were thrust a hunting knife and tomahawk, while one hand clasped a cumbersome rifle, which, like all firearms of those times, was used ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... was indeed an ingcrashee* glumm) why I should tell her I had no prospect of departing hence. "Have not you," says she, "the same prospect that I or any other person has of departing? Sir," added she, "you don't do well, and really I fear you are slit, or you would not wear this nasty cumbersome coat (taking hold of my jacket-sleeve), if you were not afraid of showing the signs of a bad life upon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... industry, with light industry lagging far behind. Despite the use of improved seed varieties, expansion of irrigation, and the heavy use of fertilizers, North Korea has not yet become self-sufficient in food production. Indeed, a shortage of arable lands, several years of poor harvests, and a cumbersome distribution system have resulted in chronic food shortages. The year 1995 was marked by serious summer floods that worsened an already tenuous food situation. Substantial grain shipments from Japan and South Korea offset a portion of the losses. North Korea remains far behind South Korea in ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... must remain near the corpse for four or five days, observing a rigorous fast and keeping apart from their wives. They may not shave or cut their hair, and they are obliged to wear a tall pyramidal and very cumbersome head-dress. They may not touch food with their hands. If they help themselves to it, they must pick it up with their mouths alone or with a stick, not with their fingers. Oftener they are fed by an attendant, who puts the victuals into their ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... point out a fault. Then the two would repair together to the tennis courts and play a set, the pupil winning by six games to love; or go a bicycle ride, when Rhoda would practise fancy figures, while her good, but cumbersome, companion picked herself up from recumbent positions on the sidewalk, and shook the dust from her garments. At other times Rhoda would put on her riding habit and go a ride round the estate, taking care to emerge from the west gate at the moment ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... will only embrace native Egyptians, nor in that of any endeavour to convert Egypt into a British possession on the model of India or Ceylon, but rather in that of an enlarged cosmopolitanism, which, whilst discarding all the obstructive fetters of the cumbersome old international system, will tend to amalgamate all the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and enable them all alike to share in the government of their native or ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... in spite of deeply-rooted prejudices, have ultimately demonstrated the immense superiority of such constructions over the old wooden vessels. If proof of this were wanting, the removal of the costly, cumbersome steamers formerly engaged in the carrying-traffic between Glasgow and Liverpool, and the substitution in their room of light, capacious iron vessels, equally strong, and manageable with greater ease and at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... RECALL. Many of the newer plans for government include a method by which an inefficient or dishonest official can be removed from office by the people, without the cumbersome process of an impeachment. It would not be wise to apply the recall to local representatives, who would then be still more at the mercy of local wishes; but with a short ballot and the concentration of responsibility upon executives or small commissions who represent the community as a whole, it ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... time was the introduction of the Lewis light machine gun. The Maxim, and even the Vickers machine gun had been found for many reasons unsuitable for infantry work, being too heavy and cumbersome for rapid movement, too conspicuous for easy concealment. It was therefore decided to form Brigade Machine Gun Companies, who would be armed with Vickers guns, while Battalions would have Lewis guns only, on a scale of two per ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... way was narrow and dark, the banner was large and cumbersome, while the lady that bore it was nervous and weak. It is not strange, then, that Maggie, who slept at no great distance, was awakened by a tremendous crash, as of someone falling the entire length of the tower stairs, while a voice, frightened ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... shall never know want. There will be money, and plenty of it, for you to carry out my wishes regarding this house, should—well—should anything happen to me! After these details are attended to, my fortune, rather a cumbersome one, goes to—Dr. McPherson, ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... records of nature, and of the various stages of man's art and industries in every region of the world, just as a library or the Record Office preserves manuscripts and printed documents and books. Collections of such specimens are often made by private individuals, and become too cumbersome for him or his heirs to keep in order. They are then frequently given to a public museum, and I regret to say in many provincial museums are neglected and become mere rubbish, even if they were not so when first given. Often such gifts are rubbish before they are received, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... which scudded away at our approach like white drift before a gale. So plentiful was the game that at last I could stand it no longer. I had a single barrel sporting Martini with me in the litter, the "Express" being too cumbersome, and espying a beautiful fat eland rubbing himself under one of the oak-like trees, I jumped out of the litter, and proceeded to creep as near to him as I could. He let me come within eighty yards, and then turned his head, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... appearance, interlacing each other in large meshes like an extensive net-work. These roots are white, as thick as a man's little finger, and fragrant, and spread horizontally along the surface. The blossom is like a small white rose.] but finding them cumbersome in climbing the steep wooded hills, she deposited them at the foot of a tree near the boys, and pursued her search; and it was not long before she perceived some pretty grassy-looking plants, with heads of bright lilac ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... any time you get into trouble or want help about something," said Mrs. Gordon over the telephone. "One of us will come right up. Most likely it will be Harriet. I'm so cumbersome, I can't get about as I'd like to. Large bodies move slowly, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... selfish, the native women pass their time in chattering and giggling, the children play and squabble, the ubiquitous dog sleeps in the sun; but from daybreak to midnight the little mouse-colored donkeys toil unceasingly. All burdens too bulky or too cumbersome for man are put on his back; the provender which horses and camels have refused becomes his portion; he is the first to begin the day’s labor, and the last to turn in. It is impossible to live long in the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... herds of caribou,—splendid old stags with massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets, sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, endless lines converging upon the vast open barrens where the caribou gathered to select their ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... expensive steam locomotives, easy rapid transit instead of the laborious crawl through the stifling desert heat—a complete railway installation, swiftly and cheaply called into being, instead of a costly and cumbersome makeshift. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... both, then was it that Jupiter held a parliament, or general convention, wherein it was unanimously resolved upon and condescended to by all the gods, that they should worthily and valiantly stand to their defence. And because they had often seen battles lost by the cumbersome lets and disturbing encumbrances of women confusedly huddled in amongst armies, it was at that time decreed and enacted that they should expel and drive out of heaven into Egypt and the confines of Nile that whole crew of goddesses, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... completion of the ceiling frescoes. There is a great difference between the two works. The figures on the ceiling are strong and powerful, their attitudes spirited and graceful. Those in the Last Judgment are huge and cumbersome, their attitudes strained and violent. The entire effect of the vast company of colossal figures is awe-inspiring, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... Fitzgeralds, never returning there even to visit it, had come to be almost forgotten. The room with the old-fashioned furniture had been reserved by the owners of the place to leave some of their poor old treasures in—relics too cumbersome to be carried about with them in their strange wanderings, but too precious, evidently, to be parted with. We, of course, never could know what may not have been hidden away in some of the queer old bureaux I told you of. Family papers of importance, perhaps; possibly some ancient love-letters, ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... of the larger of these islands, twenty miles south of the Penobscot Settlement and a little to the southwest of Mount Desert, that a still-favoring wind brought the cumbersome craft near mid-afternoon. In a long bay that cut deep into the landward shore Amos Swan had found a pebbly beach a score of yards in length, where a boat could be run in at any tide. As it was just past the flood, the man ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... very young, and many of them being separated by the violence of the shock, they fell upon a crab-tree which was growing below them; they have, like the farina of plants, united, and produced a fish resembling both. I endeavoured to bring one with me, but it was too cumbersome, and my salt-water Pegasus seemed much displeased at every attempt to stop his career whilst I continued upon his back; besides, I was then, though galloping over a mountain of rocks that lay about midway the passage, at least five hundred fathom below the surface of the sea, and began ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... the Exposition, with two fine vistas of the two avenues. To our right stood the massive Palace of Machinery, one of the largest buildings in the world, so successfully treated by the architect that it did not give the faintest suggestion of being cumbersome or monotonous. "It's the Baths of Caracalla in Rome," said the architect, "adapted by a master. Those three gables above the main entrance are taken directly from the baths. See how simple the ornamentation is and yet how satisfying. The building as a whole ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... it, and she did not run away as she had meant to do. Presently he asked for a screw-driver and a can of oil, and when she had procured them he did a number of things to the cumbersome loom, the result of which, when she attacked it once more, proved that he had relieved to a certain extent the hardest of ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... vast gor-bellied volume, bigger bulkt than a Dutch hoy, and more cumbersome than a payre ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... of labour is well established, every man becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society becomes a commercial society; and the continual process of exchange leads inevitably to the origin of money. In the absence of money or a general medium of exchange, society would be restricted to the cumbersome method of barter. Every man therefore would early endeavour to keep by him, besides the produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some commodity such as other people will be likely to take in exchange for the produce of their particular industries. Cattle, for example, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... manner, short in person, red in the face, cumbersome in figure, addicted to naughty words, not nice about driving fearfully hard bargains, a man whom men hated, not undeservedly; and yet, nevertheless, a man capable of loving a woman with all the veins of his heart, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... and came to the conclusion that now was the time to let another snibbet of information go. "The system of study consists of an electronic device, the exact nature of which I do not understand. The entire machine is large and cumbersome. In it, as a sort of 'heart,' is a special circuit. Without this special circuit the thing is no more than an expensive aggregation of delicate devices that could be used elsewhere in electronics. One such machine stands unused in the Holden ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... and by fattening them to such an extent that they have been injured in constitution, and in many cases converted into cripples behind. The prizewinning rough-coated St. Bernard, as he is seen to-day is a purely manufactured animal, handsome in appearance certainly, but so cumbersome that he is scarcely able to raise a trot, let alone do any tracking in the snow. Usefulness, however, is not a consideration with breeders, who have reared the dog to meet the exigencies of the show ring. There is still much left to be desired, and there is room for considerable improvement, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... cumbersome and the current swift, so that we were swept down a long way before we could cross it. At length we reached still water near the further shore, and seeing a landing-place, managed to beach the punt and to drag our horses to the bank. Then leaving the craft to drift, for we had no time to scuttle ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... greasy tavern raise your inclination for the city: and this, because my little spot will sooner yield frankincense and pepper than grapes; nor is there a tavern near, which can supply you with wine; nor a minstrel harlot, to whose thrumming you may dance, cumbersome to the ground: and yet you exercise with plowshares the fallows that have been a long while untouched, you take due care of the ox when unyoked, and give him his fill with leaves stripped [from the boughs]. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... to Rome.—The culprit is required to go to each person and say that he or she is going on a journey to Rome and ask whether they have anything to send to the Pope. The players load him up with various articles, the more cumbersome the better, which he must carry until every person has been visited. Then he must walk out of the room and back, distributing the articles to their ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... taken in making rifles for heavy game. There cannot be a better calibre than No 10; it is large enough for any animal in the world, and a double-barreled rifle of this bore, without a ramrod, is not the least cumbersome, even at the weight of fifteen pounds. A ramrod is not required to be in the gun for Ceylon shooting, as there is always a man behind with a spare rifle, who carries a loading rod, and were a ramrod fitted to a rifle of this size, it would render it very ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... cried, in his heavy cumbersome way. And the sound of his deep voice alone served to ward off the encroachment of that final weakness which, in spite of all her courage, the girl was at ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... lamp, wireless telephony was out of the question for him, so he had to stick to the spark coil transmitter which needed only a battery current to energize it, and this, of course, limited him to sending Morse signals. As the electrolytic detector was cumbersome and required a liquid, the crystal detector which came into being shortly after was just as sensitive and soon displaced the former, even as this had ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... course I am exasperated when a kingfish takes hold. My brother pulled in this kingfish, which was small, and we rebaited our hooks and went on again. I saw more turtles, and one we almost ran over, he was so lazy in getting down. These big, cumbersome sea animals, once they get headed down and started, can disappear with remarkable rapidity. I rather enjoy watching them, but my boatman, who is a native of these parts and therefore a turtle-hunter by instinct, always wore a rather disappointed ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... conducted in the extensive store-room of Messrs. Bosch Brothers, which, in order to facilitate our operations, is cleared of its cumbersome contents. The arch is destined to stand in that part of the street which divides the warehouse from the market-place. The latter stands at an elevation of more than forty feet above the pavement, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... covered all men in his army. Rosecrans was far superior in artillery and cavalry, as all of the batteries belonging to Longstreet's corps, or that were to attend him in the campaign of the West, were far back in South Carolina, making what speed possible on the clumsy and cumbersome railroads of that day. So it was with Wofford's and Bryan's Brigades, of McLaw's Division, Jenkins' and one of Hood's, as well as all of the subsistence and ordnance trains. The artillery assigned to General Longstreet by General Lee consisted of Ashland's ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... on the ground by the campfire, Hi, Hippy and Grace having decided that the rifles would be cumbersome to carry, and that their revolvers would be much more serviceable. After Hi Lang had given final instructions as to how they were to operate, the three started out and soon were out of sight ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... spelling of Holzminden is marked by an asterisk when first employed. Afterward only the asterisk (*) is used, instead of the cumbersome phonetic symbol. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... desiring to accomplish all manner of illegal purposes. Especially was it an apt tool for the "System," which in the meantime was perfecting its control of the people's institutions. The owners of railroads running through the same territory, finding cumbersome and hampering the restrictions with which the community they served had safeguarded its interests, formed "trusts." Straightway there were valuable results—the combination was emancipated from the regulations which had bound its individual members; competition was eliminated ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... chances". The rule that no picture is to be purchased until it has been seen and approved of by the corporation forbids all extraordinary chances, and the unique and only moment is lost in foolish formulae. The machinery is too cumbersome; and chances of sale-rooms cannot be seized; it is instinct and not reason that decides the collector, and no dozen or twenty men can ever ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... land which we have watered with our tears and our blood is now our mother country, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is free."[1] This point of view received popular expression in a song which bore the cumbersome title, "The Colored Man's Opinion of Colonization," and which was sung to the tune of "Home, Sweet Home." The first stanza was ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... evening to tell you so. Perhaps some day you will understand my views and agree with them. Till then, good-bye. I am due at a comrade's house at Willesden; he is going in for the No Rent Campaign, and I have promised to help him move to-night, but first I must go home and get out of these cumbersome clothes into a more rational dress; coats and trousers impede one's every thought and movement. Good-bye," and he grasped my hand and was off, walking with ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... one hundred and fifty tons burthen—although, in fact, they rarely carry more than fifteen tons for fear of spoiling the fish. The dried-cod fishery is carried on in vessels of all sizes; but it is essential that they be of a certain depth, because the fish is more cumbersome than weighty. The vessels however usually set sail about the month of March or April, in order that they may have the advantage of the summer season, to dry the fish. There are vessels which go to Newfoundland laden with brandy, flour, beans, treacle, linen and woollen ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... hands deep in his pockets, his pipe sending up clouds of smoke, his tall muscular frame tilted back. His eyes were fixed on an extraordinary object that crawled slowly over the polished floor. It was a gigantic tortoise—a specimen of Testudo elephantopus—a huge cumbersome brute. Its ancient, scaly head was thrust out and its eyes gleamed with a kind of sharp intelligence. The surface of its vast and massive shell was covered over with scribbles in white chalk—notes made by Sarakoff who was in the habit of jotting down ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reestablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a surface, and every time there is an exception there is an exception ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... and inefficient: telegraph lines but in their infancy. Intercourse among the people, outside of a narrow fringe on the Atlantic coast, was cumbersome, and impeded by many obstacles. Primitive conditions everywhere prevailed, and communities brooded in silence, growing stragglingly in sluggish indifference, content with ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... tobacco shed, a spot entirely removed from observation. I have been compelled to accept pistols as the weapons, as we have nothing else here at all suitable for the purpose— cavalry sabres being far too cumbersome. Lieutenant Starr chances to possess two derringers exactly alike which we have mutually agreed upon. I hope this is satisfactory ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... the inner door with some difficulty, for it was heavy and cumbersome, and found myself in the hall. Although nothing remarkable met my eye, I was delighted to find everything in keeping with the place. The old-fashioned furniture, the old oak, the grim portraits and quaint heraldry, all were there. I was much interested in some carved beams of black oak, which ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... Cambridge to surprise and capture the city. It was to proceed by land and water up the Kennebec, and down the Chaudiere to the St. Lawrence. The route, though used by trappers and Indians, was dimly traced, and the equipment of the expedition was too cumbersome for the rough work which lay before it.[105] Soon after leaving their transports at Fort Western, where, fifty-eight miles from its mouth, the Kennebec ceased to be navigable except by bateaux, the troops began to suffer great hardships. Their ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... somewhat heavy and cumbersome, and therefore require well-built tracks with heavy rails, but they have very great advantages for metal mine work. They need but a single track and are of low initial cost where compressed air is already a requirement ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... hurried with Marshal Soult's corps and all his guard, infantry, cavalry and artillery, towards Telnitz; where he attacked in the rear the enemy columns which Marshal Davout was attacking in front. From this moment, the cumbersome masses of the Austro-Russians, crammed together on the narrow pathways which ran alongside the Goldbach, finding themselves between two fires, fell into indescribable confusion. The ranks broke down and each man sought ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... style of wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian never more than five, and frequently only three; and instead of writing words by syllables, sounds ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... be happy, don't they?" she reasoned, with a rising inflection at the end of the phrase that surprised and a trifle disquieted her. "Don't they?" she asked herself, thoughtfully, as she crept in at the side door of the magnificent, cumbersome old house that was her own now. No one but an amazed-looking maid saw her, as she regained her room, and fifteen minutes later she was circulating about the dim and mournful upper floor again. Annie called her into ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... present glory, but it contained a curiosity—a Spanish galleon—probably one of the last in existence, then rotting in the basin. We gazed with interest at the high, ornamented, carved stern with its great lanterns, its bow adorned in the same manner with carved work. We wondered how such cumbersome-looking craft could get through with safety the long voyages they performed. Returning to the ship in the cool of the evening, we rowed up to Manilla, which is well situated at the mouth of the river Pasig. This river runs down ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... each other in question, and suddenly it struck them all that they were a rather pugnacious-looking crew in their cumbersome suits of armor and formidable helmets. ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... omission of some generic titles that if written in the indented schedule would lengthen specific titles to a cumbersome extent. ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office

... hands. Without more ado I swung myself up, and clambered over the sill into the room beside her. I was looking round for something that might serve me for a weapon, when my eye encountered a tall oak press, a heavy, cumbersome affair, but, save the bed, the only furniture the room possessed. Setting my shoulder to it therefore, I began to urge it towards the door. But it was soon apparent that I could not get it there in time, for the creeping footstep was already close ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... only be done by tough and temporarily painful surgery by a Congress as prepared as the President to face up to this very real political problem. Again, I wish my successor, working with a substantial majority of his own party, the best of success in reforming the costly and cumbersome machinery of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... from the sight of men. When it raineth, it is his pent-house; when it bloweth, it is his tent; when it freezeth, it is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose; in winter he can wrap it close; at all times he can use it—never heavy, never cumbersome. Likewise for a rebel it is as serviceable; for in his warre that he maketh, (if at least it deserve the name of warre), when he still flyeth from his foe, and lurketh in the thick woods and strait passages, waiting for advantages, it is his bed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... with camp equipment. At the end of the line was a cumbersome-looking affair that was covered with canvas and drawn by four horses. A grizzled man drove these horses, and seemed ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... lately to whispering in doorways; Which—considering, you know, dear, the size of the two— Makes a block that one's company cannot get thro'; And a house such as mine is, with door-ways so small, Has no room for such cumbersome love-work at all.— (Apropos, tho', of love-work—you've heard it, I hope, That Napoleon's old mother's to marry the Pope,— "What a comical pair!)—but, to stick to my Rout, 'Twill be hard if some novelty can't be struck out. Is there no Algerine, no Kamchatkan arrived? No ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... questions in my mind, but there was no time for them then. I snatched my menore from its clip on my belt, and adjusted it quickly. It was a huge and cumbersome thing, the menore of that day, but it worked as well as the fragile, bejeweled things of today. Maybe better. The guard posted outside the ship ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... immense beasts they were now to kill. Their horses, too, were as unused to the sight of a buffalo as their riders, and in consequence were badly frightened at the first sight of the ungainly animals. The men, of course, used their rifles, which in those days were altogether too cumbersome for hunting the buffalo. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... knitted shoulder-shawl so long worn by her mother, her tooth-brush and tube of paste, and all her sundry little articles no less indispensable, into a white-paper package. There were left a short woolen petticoat, too cumbersome to include, the small wooden rocker and lamp with the china shade which she had rather unexplainably held out from the dealer's inventory. She closed the door softly on them one evening and, parcel in hand, tiptoed down the stonily cold halls and out into a street of long, thin, high-stooped ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... was hard to make. The way seemed terribly long, now that evening had closed in and they could no longer be exactly sure of their path. The cumbersome burden impeded them at every step. In the gloom they stumbled, tripped over vines and creepers, and became ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... only go through the motions of governing, for always behind their gorgeous thrones sits a shrewd and silent Dutchman who pulls the strings. Though this system of dual government has the obvious disadvantage of being both cumbersome and expensive, it is, everything considered, perhaps the best that could have been devised to meet the existing conditions, for nothing is more certain than that, should the Dutch attempt to do away with the native ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... below would have been cumbersome, but a light knotted rope is easily carried, and though it would have been hard to climb up this, our plan was to descend on each cave mouth from above, and then slip down to the foot of the cliffs, and start again AB INITIO for ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... which took almost all of the change she had in her pocket; but her ticket back to Paris, which was only a few sous, was all that she needed so she did not let her finances worry her. She still had a bag with a big slab of gingerbread in it. This she determined to leave at the cafe as it was a cumbersome parcel, but the garcon ran after her with it and she thought it a simpler matter just to take it along, not knowing that the time would come when she would look upon that gingerbread as her preserver. Inquiring at the station, she found there would not be a train back to Paris for ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... have solved the problem of disposing of the cumbersome useless bodies of my hostages, Lee," said Baxter, rubbing his hands together as ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... Kirby Hall, rather than at Haughton Park, the much larger seat which had so suddenly passed to his inheritance, and which he could not occupy without a vast establishment, that to a single man, so young, would be but a cumbersome and costly trouble. Mr. Vigors was pledged to his ward to obtain him possession of Kirby Hall, the precise day agreed upon, but Mrs. Ashleigh did not seem disposed to stir,—could not decide where else to go. Mr. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for many years, unheard-of, burden weighed heavily upon the comfortable citizens; and to none could it be more cumbersome than to my father, who was obliged to take foreign military inhabitants into his scarcely finished house, to open for them his well-furnished reception-rooms, which were generally closed, and to abandon ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... pathetic, looking back on those days, to think of the small cooking pot I carried during that time of starvation in hopes that we might find something to cook. Its weight was not great, but it was a cumbersome thing to carry, as it dangled about and caught in all ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... perdere causas," is a despicable policy both in individuals and in states. In the present case, such a policy would be not only despicable, but absurd. The mere extent of empire is not necessarily an advantage. To many governments it has been cumbersome; to some it has been fatal. It will be allowed by every statesman of our time that the prosperity of a community is made up of the prosperity of those who compose the community, and that it is the most childish ambition to covet dominion which adds to no man's comfort ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... huge chamber hung with tattered tapestries and barely set forth with cumbersome pieces of furnishing, my lady lay in a gloomy, canopied bed, with her new-born child at her side, but not looking at or touching it, seeming rather to have withdrawn herself from the pillow on which ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... taken an early start that morning with the team. Sylvia would have liked to go with him, but he explained that he had to bring back a cumbersome load and needed all ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... unsupported, somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he would not feel thus sick and ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... sir, would soon get accustomed to the rocking. But I should have to leave my horse behind, Joseph said. He was fain to see his father and the lake; he was already there in spirit, and would like to transport his cumbersome body there in the least possible time; but he could not separate himself from Xerxes, a beautiful horse that he had brought with him from Egypt—a dark grey—a sagacious animal that would neigh at the sound of ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... preferred to disguise her anger and gave the impression of a quiet, frivolous gambol, for she whinnied softly and stared, with ears pricked and head erect, in a haughty look of inquiry at the more cumbersome ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... marched away over the brow of the hill the sun shone down with excessive and caloric fervour and the dust rose in thick clouds, coating our lineaments, which already were bedewed with perspiration. Momentarily the articles that filled my arms and hung on my shoulders and back grew more cumbersome and burdensome, and speedily I developed a blistered and feverish condition of ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... and getting down from the coach-top with great alacrity, cut a cumbersome kind of caper in the road. After which, he went into the public-house, and there ordered spirituous drink to such an extent, that Mr Pecksniff had some doubts of his perfect sanity, until Jonas set them quite at rest by saying, when the coach could ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... haste, attended by the most disheartening nervousness, I tried to find my cap to remove it in the presence of royalty. Unfortunately I was obliged to release the somewhat cumbersome crowbar I had been carrying about with me, and it dropped with a sullen thwack upon my toes. In moments of gravity I am always doing something like that. The pain was terrific, but I clutched at the forlorn hope that she might at least ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... extra wheel on the rear of the roadster, but it was heavy and cumbersome, and the girl knew from experience what a dirty job changing a wheel is. She had just about decided to drive home on the rim, when a young man crossed the walk from Erie Street and joined her in her doleful appraisement of the ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... pulled on my space-suit and clambered through the air-lock. I ran, until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to a staggering walk through the sand beside the ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson

... that is noticeable in the present instance is, that the writing has lost the sharpness of the graver by use, or returning it into its case; or more probably the case has not been used at all, being cumbersome and set aside as a curious work of art, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... familiarity of strangers, but hunger is one of the factors in man-building, and the scales soon began to fall from his eyes. Dignity is a good thing to stand on, but a poor thing to travel with, and Max soon found it the most cumbersome piece of luggage ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... such richness and possibility of precision is of no importance; many a life's jeopardy has turned on less. Nor can it be said that this unlimited capacity of expression makes the mechanism of the language cumbersome, for the whole scheme of Esperanto can be thoroughly mastered in a ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen

... to improve the artillery equipment of the army in South Africa. Prior to the war it had been ascertained by the Intelligence department that the Boers had in their possession several 150 m/m Creusots and a battery of 120 m/m howitzers, but the cumbersome carriages on which the former weapons were mounted had led to the belief that they were intended solely for use in the forts and positions near Pretoria and Johannesburg. The howitzers had been classified in ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... Austria, the whole world knew from the published treaties that Germany was bound to come to the assistance of her ally. It would have been two against one, and the two could have waited until Russia had finished her cumbersome mobilization. For even if she had her whole army of many million men on the frontier, Austria and Germany together were strong enough to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... the interior of the building is quite as beautiful. Restoration of an unusually careful and discreet style has done much to revive the deteriorated splendours of the place. Sixty years ago the nave was filled with hideous and cumbersome pews, and such work as had been done towards keeping the place in repair was in the worst possible taste. But a change has been wrought of the happiest kind in recent years, so that no cathedral in the country can boast ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... in importance I would place a folding chair. Many men scoff at a chair as a cumbersome luxury. But after a hard day on foot or in the saddle, when you sit on the ground with your back to a rock and your hands locked across your knees to keep yourself from sliding, or on a box with no rest for your spinal column, you begin to think a chair is not a luxury, but ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semitrailer coming from the opposite direction rock dangerously, jackknife into the dividing posts that separated north and south-bound traffic, crunch ponderously through them, and crash to a stop, several hundred feet ahead of ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... according to this scoring schedule (11). In 1943, MacDaniels and Wilde (12) summarized the previous work done, added many tests and evaluated the scoring system. This was not considered to be altogether satisfactory. In the first place, it was somewhat cumbersome and had never been adopted by the Association nor had it been used much by others. The figuring of percentages and penalties made a score too involved for wide aceptance. A very serious difficulty was the problem of shrunken kernels and empty nuts. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association



Words linked to "Cumbersome" :   ill-chosen, unmanageable, cumbrous, infelicitous, inapt, awkward, unwieldy



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