Literary notes about Cumbersome (AI summary)
In literature, cumbersome is often used to evoke a sense of both physical weight and unwieldiness as well as metaphorical burden. Writers describe tangible objects that are heavy or awkwardly large—a raft drifting downstream [1], a heavy table [2], or even a clumsy lithographic stone [3]—to vividly capture physical encumbrance. At the same time, the term extends to abstract ideas, as seen in critiques of complex, inefficient processes [4] or outdated systems of communication [5]. By applying cumbersome to varied contexts, authors effectively emphasize the clumsiness or impracticality inherent in both material and conceptual challenges.
- Water was flowing over the floor of the Crocker shack as the boat and the cumbersome raft started downstream.
— from The Wishing Well by Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt - The table we were sitting at was about five feet long, and unusually cumbersome and heavy.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain - The lithographic stone is rather a cumbersome thing to handle, but the initial drawing can be done on paper and afterwards transferred to the stone.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed - It is a cumbersome, expensive way of doing business, full of delay and circumlocution.
— from An American Diplomat in China by Paul S. (Paul Samuel) Reinsch - It was also during this transitional twelfth century that the cumbersome Babylonian language and system of writing ceased to be used in Palestine.
— from Biblical Geography and History by Charles Foster Kent
