Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Lacking grace or social polish; awkward or tactless.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Left-handed; awkward; clumsy.
  • In mathematics, skew.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Left handed
  • noun (Geom.) Winding; twisted; warped; -- applied to curves and surfaces.
  • noun Lacking grace and perceptivity in social situations; crude; tactless; socially inept.
  • noun (Chem.) Not planar; -- of molecules or molecular conformations.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Awkward or lacking in social graces; bumbling.
  • adjective mathematics, archaic Skewed, not plane.
  • adjective chemistry Describing a torsion angle of 60°

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective lacking social polish

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, awkward, lefthanded, from Old French, from gauchir, to turn aside, walk clumsily, of Germanic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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

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Examples

  • If I were strapping a sword and a main gauche, that is.

    Ode to a silver hair found in my hairbrush: matociquala 2007

  • 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.

    I Am Beowulf! You're Going Daaaaahn! Hal Duncan 2007

  • 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 Matthew Guerrieri 2007

  • 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.

    Inside out, and round and round Matthew Guerrieri 2007

  • 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 Hal Duncan 2007

  • 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 Harry Leon Wilson 1903

  • “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 2004

  • 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?"

    Lance Mannion: 2008

  • 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 2008

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

    Stephanie Gertler: Left-Overs 2009

Comments

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  • 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."

    February 17, 2007

  • A gauche ganache, served with panache, but leading to bellyache.

    February 19, 2007

  • Is this as pejorative in the French as it is in English?

    June 16, 2008

  • It can be used as a synonym for clumsy, if that's what you mean...

    (I just checked the dictionary)

    June 16, 2008

  • I once heard it pronounced "goach", which is the goachest thing one can do

    October 30, 2009

  • "C.S.S. Virginia struggles to damage the U.S.S. Monitor in this gauche'>gouache">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*

    October 8, 2012

  • it is hard to get it right!

    Did it run into the left bank?

    October 9, 2012