ungainly

adj

1. Clumsy; lacking grace.

   “They being a very ſilly ſort of People, had no other way to ſhew their Spight and Reſentment, than by making Mouths at the Dutch as they paſſed by, and ſometimes Spitting upon them. To break them of that ungainly Cuſtom, we made a reſolution amongſt us, never to let any paſs by that did ſo, whether Old or Young, Man or Woman, without giving them a good Box on the Ear.”

   “When the young scholar [Samuel Johnson] presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable study.”

   “There is but little tenderness in her manner to Celia, who is played by Miss Ione Bourke with very great simplicity and taste, though she has the disadvantage of being taller and in every way ungainlier than Rosalind, which is just the reverse of Shakespeare's intention.”

   “[A] string of huge woolly camels, most powerful and ungainliest of their kind, swaying along beneath their loads as they thrust out their shaggy snaky necks in an aimless fashion from side to side, and frightening our nags in a desperate scramble to get out of the way up the mountain slope; […]”

   “Photographs of the Fowler Moguls had always given me the impression of an ungainly design: the sight of them more then confirmed it.”

2. Gangling
3. Difficult to move or to manage; unwieldy.

   “My lady brought with her from England a most profane instrument, a lute of ungainlie height, at which Master Higginson looketh doubtfully as if it were an instrument of sin, and methinketh Mistresses Mary and Elizabeth Fenwick thinketh it also […]”

4. (obsolete)Unsuitable; unprofitable.

   “For as she could not, alas, select / Twixt ye goodlie and ungainlie, / Why of course 'twas Actions must direct / Her goode opinion,—mainlie.”

noun

1. (rare)An ungainly person or thing.

   “I was completely subdued:—hungry, cold, wet, and chilled, outside and inside, with the weather, and the place, and the people,—but that's a bull, for I saw nobody except two ungainly country footmen, and a fat groom of the chambers who took me to my room, and assigned me one of the ungainlies as valet.”

   “Long lists resulting from the listing technique will often become short poems after you and the student writer's classmates help cull out the unnecessaries, the ungainlies, and the unworthies.”

   “She'd never ridden him so fast, and the elation she felt was breathtaking. He was also lapping half the other horses; only the gray was ahead of him. One of the ungainlies came off, and there was a pile-up of horses in one corner, but she, the gray, and the brown mare avoided it neatly.”

adv

1. (obsolete)In an ungainly or unbecoming manner; improperly; undeservedly, unduly; unsuitably.