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  1. gauche love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Lacking social polish; tactless.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Left-handed; awkward; clumsy.
  2. In mathematics, skew. Specifically— Not plane; twisted.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Awkward or lacking in social graces; bumbling.
  2. adj. mathematics, archaic Skewed, not plane.
  3. adj. chemistry Describing a torsion angle of 60°

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Left handed awkward; clumsy.
  2. n. (Geom.) Winding; twisted; warped; -- applied to curves and surfaces.
  3. n. Lacking grace and perceptivity in social situations; crude; tactless; socially inept.
  4. n. (Chem.) Not planar; -- of molecules or molecular conformations.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. lacking social polish

Etymologies

  1. 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)
  2. 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.”

    Ode to a silver hair found in my hairbrush:

  • “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.”

    Archive 2007-11-01

  • “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.”

    Archive 2007-02-01

  • “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.”

    The Wrong Twin

  • ““Bella,” chided Mrs. Griffiths, while Myra, recalling a gauche uncle and cousin who had come on from Vermont several years before to visit them”

    An American Tragedy

  • “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?”

    Only Nixon could go to Ghana

  • “I'm not sure: was it considered "gauche" or did the chomping frazzle my father's ...”

    Stephanie Gertler: Left-Overs

  • “I'm not sure: was it considered "gauche" or did the chomping frazzle my father's nerves?”

    Stephanie Gertler: Left-Overs

  • “Who's the friggin' "gauche" one, you placenta-burying, nipple scalding freak?”

    Belly Achin'

  • “Hippy Dippy told Blondie she was "gauche" for asking why she didn't just throw it out.”

    Belly Achin'

Show 10 more examples...

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘gauche’.

Comments

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  • 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

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‘gauche’ has been looked up 9391 times, loved by 21 people, added to 133 lists, commented on 7 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.