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maladroit
Episode 4185

maladroit

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day · Merriam-Webster

April 9, 20181m 26s

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Show Notes

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 9, 2018 is:


maladroit \mal-uh-DROYT\ adjective

: lacking skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling situations : inept


Examples:

Any project, however carefully planned, is doomed to fail under maladroit management.

"[Lucy Atkins'] tale of a high-flying television historian entangled with a socially maladroit and manipulative 60-something housekeeper is smart and horrifying in equal measure." — Geordie Williamson, The Australian, 16 Dec. 2017


Did you know?

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.

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Topics

WORD OF THE DAYWORDMERRIAM-WEBSTERWORD A DAYENGLISHWEBSTERWORDSMERRIAMVOCABULARYLANGUAGEDICTIONARY