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Unskillful   Listen
adjective
Unskillful  adj.  
1.
Not skillful; inexperienced; awkward; bungling; as, an unskillful surgeon or mechanic; an unskillful logician.
2.
Lacking discernment; injudicious; ignorant. "Though it make the unskillful laugh, can not but make the judicious grieve."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unskillful" Quotes from Famous Books



... transaction was a sort of battle between the buyer and seller to see which should cheat the other. On the first day of his attendance he witnessed a specimen of the mode in which a dexterous clerk could sell an article to a lady which she did not want. An unskillful clerk had displayed too suddenly the entire stock of the goods of which she was in search; upon which she rose to leave, saying that there was nothing she liked. A more experienced ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... the Manege," said the Sorbonist, "go through his course of equitation, and being a not altogether unskillful horseman myself, I can ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... tried to push it through the wire mesh toward the banana. He also used a bit of wire in the same way, but was unable thus to get the food. As soon as a stick was placed in his cage, he grasped it and used it in a very definite, although unskillful, way to pull the banana toward him. He was extremely eager and impatient, but nevertheless persistent in his efforts, and within five minutes from the beginning of the first trial, he had succeeded in getting two pieces of banana, using always his left hand ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... realize that unskillful, mechanical work, done always with a mental reservation that it is merely a temporary expedient, keeps women's wages low, destroys confidence in female capacity, and has definite bearing not only on the individual woman's earning ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... many, as improper dress, which constricts the waist, and presses down upon the delicate organs in the pelvis; improper attention to the health at each menstruation; over-work; anxiety; miscarriages; unskillful treatment at childbirth, etc. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... but that many of these patients are seriously handicapped and others positively killed by unskillful, overzealous, superfluous examinations. A heavy-handed attendant should never be allowed to manipulate swellings in the right iliac fossa, nor in any other suspected region, for fear of destroying nature's defenses, and possibly ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... were sent into Thessaly did nothing, but, being either unskillful or unfortunate, made a dishonorable retreat, for which the city fined each of them ten thousand drachmas, and sent Epaminondas with their forces. The Thessalians, inspirited by the fame of this general, at once began to stir, and the tyrant's affairs were at ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Taylor's invention promises to be of great practical value both in the hands of the ship-builder and ship-owner, who have now an instrument placed before them, by the proper use of which all danger from unskillful loading can ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... island; and that, when he rested from his hard labor, he cut willow branches to shelter a poor orphan child which had neither parents nor a name of its own. What joys he knew here! how he listened for the first word the child could speak! The little man had such trouble to shape his unskillful lips to the words. "Papa," of course, was the first; what else could it be? The child learns also to understand the sorrowful side of life; when a new tooth comes, what pain and sleepless nights must be endured! Noemi remains at home ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... gradually out of the shadow of her past life, as though it were but her natural progress down the narrow path on which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their first meeting. Remembering the experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the wiser, and the more prudent—if ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you were expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were experienced, your soldiers warlike and disciplined. Booty excited ardor, bravery was rewarded, cowardice and insubordination punished, and all the springs of the human heart were in action. Thus you vanquished a hundred nations, and of a mass of conquered ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... Bergens Tidende[40] gives a careful, well-written analysis of the play and of the presentation. The reviewer gives full credit for the beauty of the staging and the excellence of the acting, but criticises the censor sharply for the unskillful cutting, and the stage manager for the long, tiresome waits. Bergens Aftenblad[41] praises the performance ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... more convenient for unskillful laborers to work in a wide ditch than in a narrow one, and although the laborers frequently protest that they cannot work so rapidly in narrow ditches, yet it is found that, in contract work, by the rod, they usually open the ditches ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... former sense, the relative that is preferable to who; and I shall presently show why. This example, in the latter form, is found in Sanborn's Grammar, page 142d; but whether the author meant what he says, or not, I doubt. Like many other unskillful writers, he has paid little regard to the above-mentioned distinction; and, in some instances, his meaning cannot have been what his words declare: as, "A prism is a solid, whose sides are all parallelograms."—Analytical ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the gain? A division of wealth which would seem unjust to many would exist now as well as before, because the idle and the unskillful would receive the same reward as the most industrious and skillful.(495) The opposition of one class of society to another, so much complained of, would continue. The only difference would be, that whereas, it now comes from the weak, it would then come from ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... farming as our first immigrants were practicing was in many ways rude and full of the mistakes of ignorance, yet, rude as it was, and ill-tilled as were most of our Wisconsin farms by unskillful, inexperienced settlers who had been merchants and mechanics and servants in the old countries, how should we like to have specially trained and educated farmers drive us out of our homes and farms, such as they were, making use of the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... green as grass; verdurous. emerald green, pea green, grass green, apple green, sea green, olive green, bottle green, coke bottle green. greenish; virent[obs3], virescent[obs3]. green (learner) 541[new, inexperienced, novice], (unskillful) 699. green [ill, sick]. Phr. green with envy; the green grass of Ireland; the wearing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... lack of that elegance in the houses, the furniture, the vehicles, the table ware, etc., that was so much in evidence at the time of the Revolution. This was due in part to the newness of the country. It was impossible amid the forests of America, where artisans were few and unskillful, to imitate all the luxuries of England, and the planters were as yet too busily employed in reducing the resources of the country to their needs to think of more than the ordinary comforts of life. Moreover, the wealth of the colony was by no ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... the effects of the progress of sentimentalism was the decline of satire. Peculiarly the weapon of the classical school, it had fallen into unskillful hands: Churchill, though keen and bold, lacked the grace of Pope and the power of Johnson. Goldsmith might have proved a worthier successor; but though his genius for style was large, his capacity for sustained indignation was ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... colonies? Where are my Batavian provinces? Where is my gigantic power, and the glory of Spain, which resounded from one hemisphere to the other? What have you done with my inheritance, ye cowardly and unskillful men? Where are my treasures; where the victorious fleets that crossed the ocean to bring back in profusion to my empire the gold and gems of the New World?' The question naturally arises, what can be the cause of so many evils? of such utter misery, such extreme ignorance, ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... the Upper Amazon runs aground, it is almost always in consequence either of the ignorance of the pilot or of the unskillful handling of the vessel. To get aground when the water is falling endangers the detention of the vessel until she is floated off by the next rise of the river, which may not occur for months; getting aground when the water is rising usually necessitates a delay of only a few ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... opinion. She was very straight, very tall, and not at all flexible in face or figure. On her head she wore a great straw bonnet, with trimmings of the same, in which she looked as if she had been thatched by an unskillful labourer; and in her hand she held a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... struggles. Smooth, nonirritating bodies, as buttons, pebbles, etc., do no particular harm for a long time, and may remain unnoticed for years. But the most serious damage not infrequently results from unskillful attempts at their removal by persons (even physicians unused to instrumental work on the ear) who are driven to immediate and violent action on the false supposition that instant interference is called for. Insects, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... in pulling the boat to the spot had given the Irish lad a chance to regain his usual good nature, and he made no protest against the decision of his companion, though Terry was no unskillful handler of the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... constitution is joined to the ecclesiastical constitution like an edifice to its spire, and, through this sharp pinnacle, seeks the storm even within the darkening clouds of heaven. The evil all springs out of this unskillful, gratuitous, compulsory fusion, and, consequently, from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... hand, and looking into the large blue eyes sparkling so mirthfully, "Helen, I tell you if I could find an amiable girl, brought up in all the beautiful simplicity of the country, no matter how unskillful in the world's ways—one who, ignorant of my wealth and standing, would unite her fate to mine for better or for worse—then, Helen, I could fall at her feet, and worship her as the star of ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... leading principles of bee-culture as they are set forth in this Manual, will never under any circumstances find it necessary to provoke to fury a colony of bees. Let it be remembered that nothing can be more terribly vindictive than a family of bees when thoroughly aroused by gross abuse or unskillful treatment. Let their hive be suddenly overthrown or violently jarred, or let them be provoked by the presence of a sweaty horse, or any animal offensive to them, so that the anger at first manifested by a few, is extended to the whole community, and the most severe ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... more cautiously conceals that part which ought to be dissembled: And this I am sure is a most admirable part of Eloquence; as Tully in his Epistle to Atticus says, 'Tis rare to speak Eloquently, but more rare to be eloquently silent: And this unskillful Criticks are not acquainted with, and therefore are wont oftner to find fault with that which is not fitly exprest, than commend that which is prudently conceal'd: I could heap up a great many more things to this purpose, but I see no need of such ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... Adj. green, verdant; glaucous, olive, olive green; green as grass; verdurous. emerald green, pea green, grass green, apple green, sea green, olive green, bottle green, coke bottle green. greenish; virent^, virescent^. green (learner) 541, new, inexperienced, novice, (unskillful) 699. green (ill, sick). Phr. green with envy; the green grass of Ireland; the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... their charges, were very solicitous about the care of their books. Readers were warned to handle the books with care, to be careful about turning the leaves and especially to keep their fingers off the ink. Evidently the ancient readers had the tendency common to unskillful readers everywhere to trace the lines with their fingers as they read. The books were classified by subject matter, numbered, and catalogued. Some of these ancient catalogues showing the exact contents ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... Visigoths; the troops of Colias and Suerid expected the approach of the great Fritigern, ranged themselves under his standard, and signalized their ardor in the siege of Hadrianople. But the resistance of the garrison informed the Barbarians, that in the attack of regular fortifications, the efforts of unskillful courage are seldom effectual. Their general acknowledged his error, raised the siege, declared that "he was at peace with stone walls," and revenged his disappointment on the adjacent country. He accepted, with pleasure, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon



Words linked to "Unskillful" :   unskilled, botchy, butcherly



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