slack-handed
Part of speech: adj
adv
noun
Morphological type: compound
Etymology: From slack + handed.
Compound parts: slack
handed
Inflected forms:
form: more slack-handed
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most slack-handed
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: slackhanded
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: more slack-handed
pos: adv
tags: comparative
form: most slack-handed
pos: adv
tags: superlative
form: slackhanded
pos: adv
tags: alternative
form: slackhanded
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.
pos: adj
examples: Their warmth stirred her up to be so busy and laudably benevolent; perhaps if he had been away she might have been idle and slack-handed; but I do not know.
It was the fate of the Creoles—possibly a climatic result—to be slack-handed and dilatory.
His autocracy had been transformed into a system of feudal baronies, with president Fitzsimmons as the slack-handed overseer.
gloss: Done carelessly; slapdash.
pos: adj
examples: Solomon had a thorough contempt for slothful, slack-handed farming, and lost no opportunity of giving drowsy ignorance a view of its own deformity, and its own certain fate.
On the whole a great deal of slack-handed service was put up with.
I blame the shoddy quality of Portuguese sea-charts for this, though doubtless the Portuguese would blame the compass, or the wind, or the water, or the Ceylonese, or the shape of the world, or the Moon, or anything else that might absolve their own slack-handed workmanship.
gloss: Having or done with hands that are slack.
pos: adj
examples: She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed, slack-handed clock.
The gun jiggled in a slack-handed grip, but the trigger finger looked tight.
Edna gave us a slack-handed wave as I agitated the road gravel.
gloss: Done with hands or wrists that are slack.
pos: adv
examples: No less stunned, I stood there, too, slack-handed, empty of thought.
Gallyon took his glass and held it slack-handed, elbow resting on the arm of his chair.
Ninja offered the phone, slack-handed. The Wasp took it from him.
Upon its remains Miles danced slack-handed and slack-footed, a comic imitation of a marionette, and John saw that in Miles there was no real danger, that his object had been simply to gain Loretta's attention.
gloss: Idly or carelessly.
pos: adv
examples: Yet they sit slack-handed, doing nothing about it, unable to agree even among themselves.
If I told her the same thing she only giggled and said, "Yessum," and then, slack-handed, went right ahead and ironed a dozen wrinkles into the simplest piece.
The rest of the world stood by, slack-handed, while the Abyssinians fought our battle with spears and even bows-and- arrows, and shook their fists against the metal falling from the sky, and died for a promise which had been a lie from the very beginning.
Accounts still exist of sailors watching slack-handed from the gunwhales while one of their colleagues drowned.
gloss: A collection of slack-handed people.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: But what saith the wise man of the sluggards and slack-handed, in so favourable an opportunity ?
But you see, sir," turning to me, " I'm not one as has been brought up among the slack-handed of these days.
And also there were nights when one stair in a creaking flight, where darkies strained on hawsers or slack-handed loped between the sheds
Derived words: slack-handedly
slack-handedness
Translations: