Dictionary

cack-handed en · ADJ

Etymology

From cag (“knob, stump”) + handed; cf. also cack (“excrement”).

Meanings

1. Clumsy; inept.
   • ‘Just bend your arms and cradle him on them,’ I told her. She was so cack-handed I could hardly watch. I was short with her when I said, ‘Have you never held a baby before?’ 2004, Andrea Levy, chapter 58, in Small Island, London: Review, page 516:
   • Constance endeavoured to get eight little boys to dance also; but the little lads were to shy, what an old woman, speaking of her grandson, calls “too daffish and keck-handed to learn such aunty-praunty antics,” and all that Constance could get in the way of male support was to induce eight little lads to look on, bend their knees, and bow at intervals, whilst the maidens sang and danced. 1905, Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell, chapter 4, in Spring in a Shropshire Abbey, London: Smith, Elder & Co., pages 177–178:
   • There is the chairperson who will introduce you by saying that you need no introduction, and who will bring the session to a close with some cack-handed joke based on a phrase plucked from your talk. 2001, Terry Eagleton, chapter 4, in The Gatekeeper: A Memoir, New York: St. Martin’s Press, page 99:
2. Left-handed.
   • A left-handed child would be held up to ridicule, and the hand tied to prevent its use. In some parts of England left-handers are called “cack-handed” […] 1922, Edmund J. Sullivan, chapter 8, in Line: An Art Study, London: Chapman & Hall, page 88:
3. Back-handed.

Forms

Deriveds

cack-handedness · cack-handedly