gauche

adjective

lacking social grace, sensitivity, or acuteness; awkward; crude; tactless: Their exquisite manners always make me feel gauche.

Origin:
1745–55; < French: awkward, left; Middle French, derivative of gauchir to turn, veer < Germanic

Related forms

gauche·ly, adverb

gauche·ness, noun

Can be confused: gauche, gouache.

Synonyms
inept, clumsy, maladroit; coarse, gross, uncouth.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To Gauche

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World English Dictionary

gauche (ɡəʊʃ)

—*adj*
	lacking ease of manner; tactless

[C18: French: awkward, left, from Old French gauchir to swerve, ultimately of Germanic origin; related to Old High German wankōn to stagger]

'gauchely

—*adv*

'gaucheness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Word Origin & History

gauche

"awkward, tactless," 1751, from Fr. gauche "left" (replacing O.Fr. senestre in that sense), originally "awkward, awry," from M.Fr. gauchir "turn aside, swerve," from O.Fr. gaucher "trample, reel, walk clumsily," from Frank. *welkan "to full" (cf. O.H.G. wankon, O.N. vakka "to stagger, totter").

Example sentences

There is something endearingly gauche about the new millionaires.

Even among our gauche crew, publicly celebrating your nine-digit haul was

considered over the top.

Be gauche and put it in the cover letter.

Her looks are far from arresting, her manners are slightly gauche and her way

with a gag line is painful.

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Related Words

awkward gaucherie gouache indelicate

left-hand dagger main gauche maladroit obtuse

Matching Quote

"Since childhood, I have been enchanted by the fact and the symbolism of the right hand and the left—the one the doer, the other the dreamer. The right is order and lawfulness, le droit. Its beauties are those of geometry and taut implication. Reaching for knowledge with the right hand is science. Yet to say only that much of science is to overlook one of its excitements, for the great hypotheses of science are gifts carried in the right hand. Of the left hand we say that it is awkward and, while it has been proposed that art students can seduce their proper hand to more expressiveness by drawing first with the left, we nonetheless suspect this function. The French speak of the illegitimate descendent as being à main gauche, and, though the heart is virtually at the center of the thoracic cavity, we listen for it on the left. Sentiment, intuition, bastardy. And should we say that reaching for knowledge with the left hand is art? Again it is not enough, for as surely as the recital of a daydream differs from the well-wrought tale, there is a barrier between undisciplined fantasy and art. To climb the barrier requires a right hand adept at technique and artifice."

-Jerome S. Bruner