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. Skewed, not plane.
- adj. Describing a torsion angle of 60°
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Left handed awkward; clumsy.
- n. Winding; twisted; warped; -- applied to curves and surfaces.
- n. Lacking grace and perceptivity in social situations; crude; tactless; socially inept.
- n. Not planar; -- of molecules or molecular conformations.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. lacking social polish
Etymologies
- French, awkward, lefthanded, from Old French, from gauchir, to turn aside, walk clumsily, of Germanic origin.
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 4084 more...
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jaydrox's list
Mah list!
mediocracy, captivatingly, devastatingly, dazedly, heavenly, flawless, copious, conviction, synoptic, amalgamation, prefatory, precursory and 150 more...
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Cosmicomics
Words found in a collection of short stories by Italo Calvino.
promontory, spire, gauche, diaphanous, lapillus, pallid, patina, menhir, telluric, rarefaction, Devonian, Carboniferous and 18 more...
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Loan words from French
gite, coq au vin, dernier cri, clique, hors d'œuvre, touché, naïve, coquette, bourgeois, contretemps, flâneur, film noir and 63 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] 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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Faves
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Of French Origin

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