Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lacking social polish; tactless.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Left-handed; awkward; clumsy.
- In mathematics, skew. Specifically— Not plane; twisted.
Wiktionary
- adj. Awkward or lacking in social graces; bumbling.
- adj. mathematics, archaic Skewed, not plane.
- adj. chemistry Describing a torsion angle of 60°
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Left handed awkward; clumsy.
- n. (Geom.) Winding; twisted; warped; -- applied to curves and surfaces.
- n. Lacking grace and perceptivity in social situations; crude; tactless; socially inept.
- n. (Chem.) Not planar; -- of molecules or molecular conformations.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. lacking social polish
Etymologies
- From French gauche ("left, awkward"), from French gauchir ("to veer, turn"), from Old French gaucher ("to trample, walk clumsily"), from Frankish welkan "to full, trample" from Proto-Germanic *welk- (“to full, roll up”). Akin to Old High German walchan ("to knead"), Old English wealcian ("to roll up, curl"), Old Norse valka ("to drag about"). More at walk (Wiktionary)
- French, awkward, lefthanded, from Old French, from gauchir, to turn aside, walk clumsily, of Germanic origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If I were strapping a sword and a main gauche, that is.”
“Like, when one of the characters extolls Beowulf's deeds and says how his story will live on forever, and you think, yeah, until a millenia and a bit later when it'll get dug up, rewired into a monstrously misshapen thing, painted in gauche muticolour, and made to dance like a monkey-puppet in a Follywood Spectacular.”
“Admission: I'm a southpaw myself, but my main gauche still lags behind its more popular sibling in terms of technique, so I'm not sure how much this would help me.”
“They had begun at once to employ upon him the oldest arts known to woman, and he was not flustered or "gauche" -- a word Winona had lately learned.”
““Bella,” chided Mrs. Griffiths, while Myra, recalling a gauche uncle and cousin who had come on from Vermont several years before to visit them”
“Nixon worked his way through a crowd, shaking hands, and in his "gauche" (Brown's word) way, tried to connect with people by asking them, "How does it feel to be free?”
“I'm not sure: was it considered "gauche" or did the chomping frazzle my father's ...”
“I'm not sure: was it considered "gauche" or did the chomping frazzle my father's nerves?”
“Who's the friggin' "gauche" one, you placenta-burying, nipple scalding freak?”
“Hippy Dippy told Blondie she was "gauche" for asking why she didn't just throw it out.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gauche’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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GRE
droll, dyspeptic, ebullient, ardor, edify, efficacy, malinger, mannered, martinet, maudlin, mendacious, mendicant and 102 more...
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Franco
fin-de-siècle, sang-froid, minatory, loup, son et lumière, bonhomie, l'heure bleue, frippery, pamplemousse, adieu, au revoir, visage and 22 more...
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February 2012
filiopietistic, bifurcate, enclave, wedlock, decadent, unduly, defunct, lapel, tumescent, capitulation, leaden, scintilla and 83 more...
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•Open List: The Hazards of Spell-Czech
insane francisco, the untied states, prepface, the pubic at large, viet kong, vice presidential..., by enlarge, fake umbrage, cupertino effect, luftwaffle, pubic schools, electron and 41 more...
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[Open] Sinister Ascriptions
These words either descend from a word or root referring to the left side or direction (e.g., “sinister”) or refer to the concept themselves. Many, but not all, have negative connotations.
sinister, sinistral, gauche, bend sinister, bar sinister, sinister-handed, sinisterly, oculus sinister, ambisinister, sinister base, sinister aspect, ramus sinister and 43 more...
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Words To Use In Creative Writing
hag-ridden, light-heeled, wendigo, longshanks, fatuous, insipid, sodden, bulging, sycophantic, uncourtly, gauche, assuasive and 102 more...
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ICE
quincunx, adoxography, panjundrum, breloque, surd, scripturient, rousant, favrile, embouchure, aquarelle, griffonage, sussultatory and 234 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
Faves
nepenthe, cupidity, anodyne, obdurate, doleful, obsolescent, quale, piquant, velleity, inchoate, disport, facile and 366 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1402 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gauche.
fbharjo it is hard to get it right!
Did it run into the left bank? Oct 8, 2012
chained_bear "C.S.S. Virginia struggles to damage the U.S.S. Monitor in this gauche painting which brings to life the drama of close combat with frightening power of armament and devotion to duty."
Aside from thinking this is a stupid sentence, I am also pretty sure they meant that the painting is gouache. *eyeroll* Oct 8, 2012
madmouth I once heard it pronounced "goach", which is the goachest thing one can do Oct 30, 2009
Prolagus It can be used as a synonym for clumsy, if that's what you mean...
(I just checked the dictionary) Jun 16, 2008
bilby Is this as pejorative in the French as it is in English? Jun 16, 2008
sionnach A gauche ganache, served with panache, but leading to bellyache. Feb 19, 2007
meeralee I love that gauche and ganache are next to each other on your list. They're a lovely pair. And now I'm doing my best to imagine "a gauche ganache." Feb 16, 2007