slack-handed

comparative more slack-handed · superlative most slack-handed · alternative slackhanded

1. Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.

   It was the fate of the Creoles—possibly a climatic result—to be slack-handed and dilatory.

   2000, George Washington Cable, Creoles of Louisiana, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   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.

   1867, Rhoda Broughton, Not wisely, but too well: A Novel, page 155

   His autocracy had been transformed into a system of feudal baronies, with president Fitzsimmons as the slack-handed overseer.

   2015, James Neff, Mobbed Up, →ISBN

2. Done carelessly; slapdash.

   On the whole a great deal of slack-handed service was put up with.

   1913, Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler, Franklin Lafayette Riley, James Curtis Ballagh, The South in the Building of the Nation, page 206

   2 more examples

   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.

   1854, The Valley Farmer: A Monthly Journal of Agriculture, Volumes 6-7

   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 own slack-handed workmanship.

   2007, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Pat Harrigan, Second Person: Role-playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, page 372

3. Having or done with hands that are slack.

   Edna gave us a slack-handed wave as I agitated the road gravel.

   2007, Ed Lynskey, The Blue Cheer, →ISBN, page 149

   2 more examples

   She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed, slack-handed clock.

   1999, Caroline Adderson, A History of Forgetting, page 353

   The gun jiggled in a slack-handed grip, but the trigger finger looked tight.

   2001, Simon Bucher-Jones, Kelly Hale, Grimm Reality, →ISBN

comparative more slack-handed · superlative most slack-handed · alternative slackhanded

1. Done with hands or wrists that are slack.

   Ninja offered the phone, slack-handed. The Wasp took it from him.

   2013, Jeff Gulvin, Sleep No More, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   No less stunned, I stood there, too, slack-handed, empty of thought.

   2011, Geraldine McCaughrean, Not the End of the World, →ISBN

   Gallyon took his glass and held it slack-handed, elbow resting on the arm of his chair.

   2013, Jeff Gulvin, The Aden Vanner Novels, →ISBN

   Upon its remains Miles danced slack-handed and 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.

   2013, Thomas Williams, The Moon Pinnace, →ISBN

2. Idly or carelessly.

   Yet they sit slack-handed, doing nothing about it, unable to agree even among themselves.

   1940, Bob Brown, Can we co-operate?, page 127

   3 more examples

   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.

   1957, Janice Holt Giles, The Believers, page 15

   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.

   1966, Nicholas Monsarrat, Life is a Four-letter Word, page 463

   Accounts still exist of sailors watching slack-handed from the gunwhales while one of their colleagues drowned.

   2010, Bella Bathurst, The Lighthouse Stevensons, →ISBN

alternative slackhanded

1. uncountableA collection of slack-handed people.

   But what saith the wise man of the sluggards and slack-handed, in so favourable an opportunity ?

   1849, William Evans, Thomas Evans, The Friends' Library, page 74

   2 more examples

   But you see, sir," turning to me, " I'm not one as has been brought up among the slack-handed of these days.

   1857, Anne Marsh-Caldwell, The Rose of Ashurst - Volume 1

   And also there were nights when one stair in a creaking flight, where darkies strained on hawsers or slack-handed loped between the sheds

   2000, Lee Ann Sandweiss, Seeking St. Louis: Voices from a River City, 1670-2000, →ISBN, page v