top-heavy
Americanadjective
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having the top disproportionately heavy; liable to fall from too great weight above.
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relatively much heavier or larger above the center or waist than below.
a top-heavy wrestler.
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Finance.
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having a financial structure overburdened with securities that have priority in the payment of dividends.
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adjective
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unstable or unbalanced through being overloaded at the top
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finance (of an enterprise or its capital structure) characterized by or containing too much debt capital in relation to revenue or profit so that too little is left over for dividend distributions; overcapitalized
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(of a business enterprise) having too many executives
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of top-heavy
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As exciting as this style of play can appear, it does leave Liverpool very top-heavy.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
Worried that the red-hot artificial-intelligence trade has made the U.S. market too top-heavy?
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026
Walk around the lumbering, top-heavy “Adam,” whose powerful hand echoes Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling but instead points earthward, and you don’t get a sense of inspired, ideal form, but of matter, growth and transformation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
It’s also a top-heavy draft, with a ton of depth in the first round and no clear first overall pick.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 12, 2026
But the weight of the obelisk on even a very large vessel would make it top-heavy and unstable.
From "The (Mostly) True Story of Cleopatra's Needle" by Dan Gutman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
