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Awkward   /ˈɑkwərd/  /ˈɔkwərd/   Listen
Awkward

adjective
1.
Causing inconvenience.
2.
Lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance.  "An awkward gesture" , "Too awkward with a needle to make her own clothes" , "His clumsy fingers produced an awkward knot"
3.
Difficult to handle or manage especially because of shape.  Synonyms: bunglesome, clumsy, ungainly.  "A load of bunglesome paraphernalia" , "Clumsy wooden shoes" , "The cello, a rather ungainly instrument for a girl"
4.
Not elegant or graceful in expression.  Synonyms: clumsy, cumbersome, ill-chosen, inapt, inept.  "A clumsy apology" , "His cumbersome writing style" , "If the rumor is true, can anything be more inept than to repeat it now?"
5.
Hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment.  Synonyms: embarrassing, sticky, unenviable.  "An awkward pause followed his remark" , "A sticky question" , "In the unenviable position of resorting to an act he had planned to save for the climax of the campaign"
6.
Socially uncomfortable; unsure and constrained in manner.  Synonyms: ill at ease, uneasy.  "Ill at ease among eddies of people he didn't know" , "Was always uneasy with strangers"



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WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University


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"Awkward" Quotes from Famous Books



... among the group of girls, who without exception were all handsome, and he felt vexed and hurt that he met her in such vulgar and awkward circumstances. He felt stupid and awkward, and made up his mind to do what Beletski did. Beletski stepped to the table somewhat solemnly yet with confidence and ease, drank a glass of wine to Ustenka's health, ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... Hohenstaufens his sympathy is with Gregory and Innocent. In the same vein is his praise of Peter the Hermit, whose motto was not the "action, action" of Demosthenes, but, "belief, belief." In the brief space of those suggestive though unequal discourses the speaker allows awkward proximity to some of the self-contradictions which, even when scattered farther apart, perplex his readers and render it impossible to credit his philosophy with more than a few strains of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... readings of this word are "churl," or "cherl," in the best manuscripts; "client" in the common editions, and "clerk" supported by two important manuscripts. "Client" would perhaps be the best reading, if it were not awkward for the metre; but between "churl" and ''clerk" there can be little doubt that Mr Wright chose wisely when he preferred ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Malachi called her, was an awkward accession to the family. Silence Withers knew no more about children and their ways and wants than if she had been a female ostrich. Thus it was that she found it necessary to send for a woman well known in the place as the first friend whose acquaintance ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sir, is in my humble opinion much like talking of a recruit's judgment. If we were to take the movements of the awkward squad, sir, as a guide, we should never form a decent line in battalion, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper


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