slack-handed

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Careless and inactive

   Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.

   • 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.
2. 2

   Done carelessly

   Done carelessly; slapdash.

   • 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.
3. 3

   Having or done with hands that are slack.

   • 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.
4. ›+ 3 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      Done with hands or wrists that are slack.

      • 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.
   2. 5

      Idly or carelessly.

      • 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.
   3. 6

      A collection of slack-handed people.

      • 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

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