Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In an unwieldy manner; cumbrously.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Individual shots are brilliant -- the connection between Susie and her highs school crush, Ray; the menacing last few moments of Susie's life with Tucci -- even while the rest of the movie unwieldily sags.

    Alex Remington: The Lovely Bones: Half of a Good Movie, Then a Slow-Motion Mess 2010

  • Meanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the

    Vanity Fair 2006

  • This consciousness of a national unity is one of the outstanding features of the time in India, all the more striking because hitherto India has been so unwieldily large, and her people incoherent, like dry sand.

    New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments John Morrison

  • It was nearly the last of April, and she wanted a well-heated elderly mansion, preferably Colonial, not too unwieldily large, with as many rose-trees around it as her discretionary powers would stand.

    The Rose-Garden Husband Margaret Widdemer 1931

  • The impression itself moves unwieldily in the cramped brain.

    Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 Studies from the Chronicles of Rome 1881

  • Without the steam-blast, by means of which the intensity of combustion is maintained at its highest point, producing a correspondingly rapid evolution of steam, high rates of speed could not have been kept up; the advantages of the multi-tubular boiler (afterwards invented) could never have been fairly tested; and locomotives might still have been dragging themselves unwieldily along at little more than five or six miles an hour.

    Lives of the Engineers The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson Samuel Smiles 1858

  • The manner of attack with the ancient navies was to bring the prow of the vessel, which was fortified by long projecting beaks of brass, to bear upon the sides of its antagonist, and this, the swell of the sea causing the Persian galleys to veer about unwieldily, the agile ships of the Greeks were well enabled to effect.

    Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838

  • Meanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the Nob:

    Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

  • It's heavy at 12.4 ounces, and a little unwieldily to use as a handheld or body-mounted camera.

    Wired Top Stories Gizmodo Brian Lam 2011

  • Richard Gardner started the unwieldily-named Facebook group,, claiming such equipment should be directing us with "gleeful beardiness".

    The Register 2010

Comments

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  • An appropriately unwieldy word.

    August 10, 2015