AWKWARD
Dictionary entry overview: What does awkward mean?
• AWKWARD (adjective)
The adjective AWKWARD has 6 senses:
1. causing inconvenience
2. lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance
3. difficult to handle or manage especially because of shape
4. not elegant or graceful in expression
5. hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment
6. not at ease socially; unsure and constrained in manner
Familiarity information: AWKWARD used as an adjective is common.
Dictionary entry details
• AWKWARD (adjective)
Meaning:
Causing inconvenience
Context example:
they arrived at an awkward time
Similar:
inconvenient (not suited to your comfort, purpose or needs)
Meaning:
Lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance
Context examples:
an awkward dancer / an awkward gesture / too awkward with a needle to make her own clothes / his clumsy fingers produced an awkward knot
Similar:
wooden (lacking ease or grace)
labored; laboured; strained (lacking natural ease)
clumsy; clunky; gawky; ungainly; unwieldy (lacking grace in movement or posture)
graceless; ungraceful (lacking grace; clumsy)
Also:
ugly (displeasing to the senses)
maladroit (not adroit)
Antonym:
graceful (characterized by beauty of movement, style, form, or execution)
Meaning:
Difficult to handle or manage especially because of shape
Synonyms:
bunglesome; ungainly; awkward; clumsy
Context examples:
an awkward bundle to carry / a load of bunglesome paraphernalia / clumsy wooden shoes / the cello, a rather ungainly instrument for a girl
Similar:
unmanageable; unwieldy (difficult to use or handle or manage because of size or weight or shape)
Meaning:
Not elegant or graceful in expression
Synonyms:
inept; inapt; ill-chosen; cumbersome; clumsy; awkward
Context examples:
an awkward prose style / a clumsy apology / his cumbersome writing style / if the rumor is true, can anything be more inept than to repeat it now?
Similar:
infelicitous (not appropriate in application; defective)
Meaning:
Hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment
Synonyms:
unenviable; embarrassing; sticky; awkward
Context examples:
awkward (or embarrassing or difficult) moments in the discussion / an awkward pause followed his remark / a sticky question / in the unenviable position of resorting to an act he had planned to save for the climax of the campaign
Similar:
difficult; hard (not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure)
Meaning:
Not at ease socially; unsure and constrained in manner
Synonyms:
ill at ease; uneasy; awkward
Context examples:
awkward and reserved at parties / ill at ease among eddies of people he didn't know / was always uneasy with strangers
Similar:
uncomfortable (conducive to or feeling mental discomfort)
