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onerous
in a sentence

show 47 more with this conextual meaning
  • For these guys, the concept carried many onerous responsibilities.†   (source)
  • They do not want to wind up like chicken growers — who in recent years have become virtually powerless, trapped by debt and by onerous contracts written by the large processors.†   (source)
  • But on that onerous day, oppressed beyond relief, my own mortality was borne in upon me on sluggish tides of doom.†   (source)
  • It was partly to avoid the onerous houseboat chores assigned them by their father that Farmer and his siblings threw themselves into virtually every extracurricular activity that Hernando High in Brooksville offered.†   (source)
  • Roran hesitated, as if unable to decide whether her request was serious and, if so, how he could politely extricate himself from such an unlooked-for and rather onerous obligation.†   (source)
  • She leaned against him in an agony of loathing, belching alcohol; his rigidity suggested that her weight was onerous; and they climbed the short steps to the door.†   (source)
  • Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil.†   (source)
  • This is almost never too onerous.†   (source)
  • She would never know how deeply he had longed to free himself all these years, how he had stayed with her only because he knew she would be lost otherwise, how onerous it had been to go on and on, day after day, setting right what he had done wrong.†   (source)
  • And if what you come up with is stupidly onerous we're going to ignore it.†   (source)
  • As SAC's third-ranking Intelligence officer, junior to the A-2 and his deputy, both brigadiers, Colonel Bragg naturally drew the most onerous hours—midnight to 0800.†   (source)
  • Some did this and continue to do it, though it is perhaps more onerous than working with blacks.†   (source)
  • God knows what Eskimo ice-floe visions had engulfed her when she sank back amid her best sellers, all those bloated books of the month with which she had tried to barricade herself against death, propped her leg up on the stool with the onerous two-handed hitching motion I remembered, and felt the rods of the metal brace slowly grow as chill as stalactites against that wretched, useless, carcinoma-riddled limb.†   (source)
  • His duties had not been onerous but now he found that he had an overwhelming desire to sneeze.†   (source)
  • The insubstantial frost feathers ensured that those last twenty feet remained hard, scary, onerous.   (source)
  • "Oh, well, nothing at all onerous, I assure you," said Scrim-geour.†   (source)
  • 'twas ostensibly ominous in the overview To be 'orribly and onerously overrun.†   (source)
  • Proceed at haste and speed and celerity, without delay, diversion or divagation to Dunkirk for the purposes of immediate evacuation on account of being 'orribly and onerously overrun from all directions.†   (source)
  • From Lonjino, Deo first heard about the onerous taxes the Belgians imposed, how small owners of cows or crops had to turn over the best part of their milk, produce, and meat to the local Burundian chiefs, who administered the hills for the colonists.†   (source)
  • So the oppression of Hutus in Burundi was both less onerous than in Rwanda and not as neatly identified as a Tutsi oppression.†   (source)
  • They were subject, among many other things, to onerous taxes, to the forced planting of certain crops, to involuntary, unpaid labor on projects designed by the Belgians and Tutsi chiefs, and to whippings for disobedience.†   (source)
  • …arrogating to herself, because it fills her veins also, nourishment from the old blood that crossed uncharted seas and continents and battled wilderness hardships and lurking circumstances and fatalities, with tranquil disregard of whatever onerous carks to leisure and even peace which the preservation of it incurs upon what might be called the contemporary transmutable fountainhead who contrives to keep the crass foodbearing corpuscles sufficiently numerous and healthy in the stream.†   (source)
  • Scarlett wondered how he managed so onerous a job in his condition but asked no questions, realizing wryly that almost anything was possible when necessity drove.†   (source)
  • And besides, he told himself, as one who suddenly remembers that there will be pleasure too in an engagement only the onerous aspects of which he has been considering, and besides I will enjoy the killing of some fascists.†   (source)
  • Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of his table now and then.†   (source)
  • A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war.†   (source)
  • But for the moment he undertook nothing more onerous.†   (source)
  • His function was a responsible one, at once onerous & thankless, and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strong patriotic impulse.†   (source)
  • By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties.†   (source)
  • …made a fine figurehead at ceremonies and spoke well—all of which had by the time he was knighted given him a heavy look, a weary look (the stream of patients being so incessant, the responsibilities and privileges of his profession so onerous), which weariness, together with his grey hairs, increased the extraordinary distinction of his presence and gave him the reputation (of the utmost importance in dealing with nerve cases) not merely of lightning skill, and almost infallible…†   (source)
  • As for Sir Percy himself, he was universally voted to be totally unqualified for the onerous post he had taken upon himself.†   (source)
  • Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and abstracted, going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not be onerous.†   (source)
  • She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when she had regained the art, for she had caught from her musical mother numerous airs that suited those songsters admirably.†   (source)
  • Young, handsome, rich, but recently from the patrician circles of Roman society, it is easy to think of the world besetting him with appeals not to give more to onerous duty or ambition attended with outlawry and danger.†   (source)
  • Between them the two families got a great portion of her private savings out of her, and finally she fled to London followed by the anathemas of both, and determined to seek for servitude again as infinitely less onerous than liberty.†   (source)
  • That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable.†   (source)
  • It is a very onerous business,[467] this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap.†   (source)
  • If the second class has the power of making the laws, it will certainly not be lavish of taxes, because nothing is so onerous as a large impost which is levied upon a small income.†   (source)
  • And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it, became quite pleasant again.†   (source)
  • They consider marriages as a covenant which is often onerous, but every condition of which the parties are strictly bound to fulfil, because they knew all those conditions beforehand, and were perfectly free not to have contracted them.†   (source)
  • Monarchical institutions have thrown an odium upon despotism; let us beware lest democratic republics should restore oppression, and should render it less odious and less degrading in the eyes of the many, by making it still more onerous to the few.†   (source)
  • The Americans have contrived in every way to make the common people eligible to the jury, and to render the service as little onerous as possible.†   (source)
  • But in proportion as labor is performed by free hands, slave labor becomes less productive; and the slave is then a useless or onerous possession, whom it is important to export to those Southern States where the same competition is not to be feared.†   (source)
  • They frequently abused that power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life: their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number; it was fixed to some few main objects, and neglected the rest; it was violent, but its range was limited.†   (source)
  • The alliance which religion contracts with political powers must needs be onerous to itself; since it does not require their assistance to live, and by giving them its assistance to live, and by giving them its assistance it may be exposed to decay.†   (source)
  • In all the confederations which had been formed before the American Union the Federal Government demanded its supplies at the hands of the separate Governments; and if the measure it prescribed was onerous to any one of those bodies means were found to evade its claims: if the State was powerful, it had recourse to arms; if it was weak, it connived at the resistance which the law of the Union, its sovereign, met with, and resorted to inaction under the plea of inability.†   (source)
  • The duke embraced Sancho and told him he was heartily sorry he had given up the government so soon, but that he would see that he was provided with some other post on his estate less onerous and more profitable.†   (source)
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