an oppressive quality that is laborious and solemn and lacks grace or fluency; "a book so serious that it sometimes subsided into ponderousness"; "his lectures tend to heaviness and repetition"
harsh or severe speech or behavior; "men associate the roughness of nonstandard working-class speech with masculinity"; "the roughness of her voice was a signal to keep quiet"
a texture of a surface or edge that is not smooth but is irregular and uneven
a religious orientation of doubt; a denial of ultimate knowledge of the existence of God; "agnosticism holds that you can neither prove nor disprove God's existence"
get or cause to become in a difficult or laborious manner
obtain by coercion or intimidation; "They extorted money from the executive by threatening to reveal his past to the company boss"; "They squeezed money from the owner of the business by threatening him"
the action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree with; "he encountered a general feeling of resistance from many citizens"; "despite opposition from the newspapers he went ahead"
the military action of resisting the enemy's advance; "the enemy offered little resistance"
group action in opposition to those in power
(psychiatry) an unwillingness to bring repressed feelings into conscious awareness
the degree of unresponsiveness of a disease-causing microorganism to antibiotics or other drugs (as in penicillin-resistant bacteria)
any mechanical force that tends to retard or oppose motion
an artifact (or system of artifacts) that is instrumental in accomplishing some end
the quality of being instrumental for some purpose
a subsidiary organ of government created for a special purpose; "are the judicial instrumentalities of local governments adequate?"; "he studied the French instrumentalities for law enforcement"