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Literary notes about cumbersome (AI summary)

Across various literary works, the word "cumbersome" is employed to evoke a sense of heaviness, clumsiness, or an unwieldy nature in both literal and metaphorical contexts. For example, Oscar Wilde uses it to distill a mass of creative work into a finer essence, suggesting that even great ideas can be burdened by their own weight [1]. Similarly, the term is applied to physical impediments, as seen in descriptions of costly coffee-making apparatus [2] and heavy luggage that impedes progress [3], while Pushkin and Joyce extend its use to portray clumsy physical forms and mechanical oddities [4, 5]. In a more personal or imaginative vein, Fitzgerald captures an internal struggle with experiences that are difficult to integrate into one’s life narrative [6], and even Wells employs the word to underscore the necessity of discarding the useless or mischievous elements of life [7]. Thus, across literature, "cumbersome" consistently serves as a versatile descriptor for anything that is awkwardly bulky or metaphorically burdensome [8, 9].
  1. It takes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and distils it into a finer essence.
    — from Intentions by Oscar Wilde
  2. It is a mistake to suppose that coffee can not be made without a great deal of costly and cumbersome apparatus.
    — from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers
  3. The cabman whips up the horse and, turning round, begins swearing at the heavy and cumbersome luggage.
    — from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
  4. In the drawing-room Loud snores the cumbrous Poustiakoff With better half as cumbersome; Gvozdine, Bouyanoff, Petoushkoff
    — from Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
  5. Groangrousegurgling Toft’s cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the room.)
    — from Ulysses by James Joyce
  6. He felt that it would take all time, more than he could ever spare, to glue these strange cumbersome pictures into the scrap-book of his life.
    — from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  7. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die.
    — from The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
  8. “It sounds cumbersome.”
    — from The Lani People by Jesse F. Bone
  9. This usually gives good results, but it may be a cumbersome approach.
    — from The Online World by Odd De Presno

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