awkward

Pluralawkwards

1. 1
   adjective

   Difficult to handle or manage, and often causing embarrassment or discomfort.

   The interview hit an awkward moment when both candidates claimed the same achievement.

   Returning the gift without offending her proved unexpectedly awkward.

   Similarembarrassing, uncomfortable, tricky, delicate, difficult

   Oppositeeasy, comfortable

2. 2
   adjective

   Lacking social skills, or feeling uncomfortable during social interaction.

   The new intern was friendly but painfully awkward in group meetings.

   Their first date stayed awkward until they discovered a shared hobby.

   Similargauche, maladroit

   Oppositeamiable

3. 3
   adjective

   Lacking skill or coordination in the use of the hands or of instruments.

   The young surgeon was still awkward with the finer instruments.

   Thick gloves made his fingers clumsy and awkward on the keyboard.

   Similarclumsy, ungraceful, gawky, unhandy

   Oppositegraceful, skillful, handy, dexterous

   Note

   The hands-on sense carries the word's oldest picture. Awk meant "odd, clumsy," and -ward adds a direction, so Middle English aukeward meant "in the wrong direction": awkward hands go the wrong way. It takes at before an activity (awkward at the trick) and with before a tool. Among its opposites is gainly, the positive that ungainly negates.

4. 4
   adjective

   Stubbornly contrary or uncooperative, and therefore difficult to handle.

   He turned awkward the moment anyone suggested a compromise.

   The committee chair could be awkward whenever a decision went against him.

   Similardifficult, uncooperative, obstinate, stubborn, contrary

   Oppositecooperative, accommodating, obliging, helpful

   Note

   Here the difficulty lives in the person or object itself, not in the moment. A right awkward chap is contrary by temperament, and heavy cabinets are awkward on moving day. In Andrew Mourant's 2020 report in Rail, a site strewn with rock and fallen vegetation is awkward enough to need specialist geoengineers. Unlike the embarrassing sense, nothing here is socially uncomfortable. It is simply hard to deal with.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A person or thing characterized by clumsiness, difficulty, or social discomfort.

   In every friend group there is an awkward who lingers at the edge of the conversation.

   Of all the rented machines, that printer was the awkward, jamming on every other page.

   Note

   A noun made by turning the adjective into a label, with a regular plural, awkwards. Eliza Ripley, writing in 1912, uses it for the ungainly pupils of deportment lessons. Grace Helbig in 2014 uses it for people you would rather not see twice. Leo Marks's Between Silk and Cyanide (1998) offers a coy euphemism, the monthly awkwards, for menstrual periods.

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