Crossword Clues

Clumsy Crossword Clue [Solved]

By Umair Qureshi

Posted on May 31, 2022

The Crossword Solver found 169 answers to “Clumsy”, 9 letters crossword clue. The Crossword Solver finds answers to American-style crosswords, British-style crosswords, general knowledge crosswords and cryptic crossword puzzles.

Answer : MALADROIT

maladroit – a

not adroit

SYNONYMS

awkward, butterfingered, cack-handed [British], clumsy, graceless, ham-fisted, ham-handed, handless, heavy-handed, left-handed, unhandy

MALADROIT COMES FROM OLD AND MIDDLE FRENCH

To understand the origin of “maladroit,” you need to put together some Middle French and Old French building blocks. The first is the word mal, meaning “bad,” and the second is the phrase a droit, meaning “properly.” You can parse the phrase even further into the components a, meaning “to” or “at,” and droit, meaning “right, direct, or straight.” Middle French speakers put those pieces together as “maladroit” to describe the clumsy among them, and English speakers borrowed the word intact back in the 17th century. Its opposite, of course, is “adroit,” which we adopted from the French in the same century.