make heavy weather of

• make heavy going of

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make heavy weather of (third-person singular simple present makes heavy weather of, present participle making heavy weather of, simple past and past participle made heavy weather of)

1. (transitive) To overcomplicate (something); to make (things) appear worse than they are.
   • 1982, Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, Oxford University Press:

     Philosophers, possibly with justification, make heavy weather of the concept of causation, but to a working biologist causation is a rather simple statistical concept.

• make heavy weather