slack-handed

See also:slackhanded

English

Alternative forms

slackhanded

Etymology

Fromslack+‎handed.

Adjective

slack-handed(comparativemoreslack-handed,superlativemostslack-handed)

Carelessandinactive;lackingfocusorinitiative.
- 1867,Rhoda Broughton,Not wisely, but too well: A Novel,page155:
  Their warmth stirred her up to be so busy and laudably benevolent; perhaps if he had been away she might have been idle andslack-handed;but I do not know.
- 2000,George Washington Cable,Creoles of Louisiana,→ISBN:
  It was the fate of the Creoles—possibly a climatic result—to beslack-handedand dilatory.
- 2015,James Neff,Mobbed Up,→ISBN:
  His autocracy had been transformed into a system of feudal baronies, with president Fitzsimmons as theslack-handedoverseer.
Donecarelessly;slapdash.
- 1854,The Valley Farmer: A Monthly Journal of Agriculture, Volumes 6-7:
  Solomon had a thorough contempt for slothful,slack-handedfarming, and lost no opportunity of giving drowsy ignorance a view of its own deformity, and its own certain fate.
- 1913,Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler, Franklin Lafayette Riley, James Curtis Ballagh,The South in the Building of the Nation,page206:
  On the whole a great deal ofslack-handedservice was put up with.
- 2007,Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Pat Harrigan,Second Person: Role-playing and Story in Games and Playable Media,page372:
  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 ownslack-handedworkmanship.
Having or done with hands that areslack.
- 1999,Caroline Adderson,A History of Forgetting,page353:
  She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed,slack-handedclock.
- 2001,Simon Bucher-Jones, Kelly Hale,Grimm Reality,→ISBN:
  The gun jiggled in aslack-handedgrip, but the trigger finger looked tight.
- 2007,Ed Lynskey,The Blue Cheer,→ISBN,page149:
  Edna gave us aslack-handedwave as I agitated the road gravel.

Derived terms

Adverb

slack-handed(comparativemoreslack-handed,superlativemostslack-handed)

Done with hands or wrists that are slack.
- 2011,Geraldine McCaughrean,Not the End of the World,→ISBN:
  No less stunned, I stood there, too,slack-handed,empty of thought.
- 2013,Jeff Gulvin,The Aden Vanner Novels,→ISBN:
  Gallyon took his glass and held itslack-handed,elbow resting on the arm of his chair.
- 2013,Jeff Gulvin,Sleep No More,→ISBN:
  Ninja offered the phone,slack-handed.The Wasp took it from him.
- 2013,Thomas Williams,The Moon Pinnace,→ISBN:
  Upon its remains Miles dancedslack-handedand 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.
Idlyorcarelessly.
- 1940,Bob Brown,Can we co-operate?,page127:
  Yet they sitslack-handed,doing nothing about it, unable to agree even among themselves.
- 1957,Janice Holt Giles,The Believers,page15:
  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.
- 1966,Nicholas Monsarrat,Life is a Four-letter Word,page463:
  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.
- 2010,Bella Bathurst,The Lighthouse Stevensons,→ISBN:
  Accounts still exist of sailors watchingslack-handedfrom the gunwhales while one of their colleagues drowned.

Noun

slack-handed(uncountable)

A collection of slack-handed people.
- 1849,William Evans, Thomas Evans,The Friends' Library,page74:
  But what saith the wise man of the sluggards and slack-handed, in so favourable an opportunity?
- 1857,Anne Marsh-Caldwell,The Rose of Ashurst - Volume 1:
  But you see, sir, "turning to me," I'm not one as has been brought up among theslack-handedof these days.
- 2000,Lee Ann Sandweiss,Seeking St. Louis: Voices from a River City, 1670-2000,→ISBN,page v:
  And also there were nights when one stair in a creaking flight, where darkies strained on hawsers orslack-handedloped between the sheds