Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Awkwardness |
AwkwardnessNoun1. Unskillfulness resulting from a lack of training. 2. The quality of an embarrassing situation; "he sensed the awkwardness of his proposal". 3. The carriage of someone whose movements and posture are ungainly or inelegant. 4. The inelegance of someone stiff and unrelaxed (as by embarrassment). 5. Trouble in carrying or managing caused by bulk or shape: "the movers cursed the unwieldiness of the big piano". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "awkwardness" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1726. (references) |
Synonyms: AwkwardnessSynonyms: clumsiness (n), cumbersomeness (n), gracelessness (n), inconvenience (n), ineptitude (n), ineptness (n), maladroitness (n), nuisance value (n), slowness (n), stiffness (n), unwieldiness (n). (additional references) |
| Antonym: gracefulness (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Difficulty | Dilemma, embarrassment; deadlock; perplexity; (uncertainty); intricacy; entanglement, complexity; cross fire; awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus, net, meshes, maze; coil; (convolution); crooked path; involvement. |
Vulgarity | Noun: vulgarity, vulgarism; barbarism, Vandalism, Gothicism; mauvis gout, bad taste; gaucherie, awkwardness, want of tact; ill-breeding; (discourtesy). |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Awkwardness |
| English words defined with "awkwardness": inconvenience, Indexterity ♦ Left-handiness ♦ nuisance value. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "awkwardness": Above ♦ More than ♦ Preceding. (references) |
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Chesterfield | Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be: it often occasions ridicule, and always lessens dignity. |
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe | Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness. |
Joseph Addison | Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Patients may have unexplained falls or a stiffness and awkwardness in gait. Sometimes the falls are described by the person experiencing them as attacks of dizziness. (references) | |
In some cases, symptoms initially affect one of the legs, and patients experience awkwardness when walking or running or they notice that they are tripping or stumbling more often. (references) | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Awkwardness" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Awkwardness" is used about 99 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 99 | 32,870 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Language | Translations for "awkwardness"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | ngathtësi (angularity, atony, backwardness, clumsiness, muff, torpor), bezdi (annoyance, bogey, bother, botheration, displeasure, flea-bite, hassle, officiousness, peeve, trouble). (various references) | |
Arabic | حرج (climacteric, critical, difficulty, discomfiture, fix, forest, high, stringent, ticklish), صعوبة (difficulty, hardness, onerousness, profoundness, quandary, stiffness), إرتباك (bewilderment, confusion, constraint, disruption, distraction, embarrassment, foolishness, involvement, morass, mystification, nonplus, perplexity, pink, puzzle, puzzlement, quandary, self consciousness, shame, shyness, spot, tangle, uneasiness). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | скованост (inelasticity, numbness, rigidity, starch, stiffness), неудобство (disadvantage, discomfiture, discomfort, inconvenience, nuisance, trouble, uneasiness), неловкост (uneasiness), непохватност. (various references) | |
Chinese | 尴尬. (various references) | |
Czech | trapnost, ožehavost, nešikovnost. (various references) | |
Finnish | pulmallisuus (complexity, difficulty). (various references) | |
French | maladresse, inconfort, gaucherie, embarrassement, côté gênant. (various references) | |
German | Ungeschicklichkeit (clumsiness, unskilfulness, unskillfulness), Unannehmlichkeit (bother, disagreeability, inconvenience, trouble). (various references) | |
Greek | σκαιότησ (bluffness, rudeness, snippiness), σκαιότητα (abruptness, boorishness, rudeness, snippiness), αδεξιότησ (helplessness, inaptitude, inaptitudeness, loutishness, muff, sloughiness, ungainliness, unhandiness, unskillfulness), αδεξιότητα (clumsiness, gaucherie, helplessness, inaptitude, inaptitudeness, loutishness, muff, sloughiness, ungainliness, unhandiness, unskillfulness). (various references) | |
Hebrew | סרבול (clumsiness). (various references) | |
Hungarian | ügyetlenség (bumbling, bungle, clumsiness, gaffe, left-handedness). (various references) | |
Indonesian | kecanggungan. (various references) | |
Italian | imbarazzo (abashment, confusion, constraint, disconcertedness, embarrassment, nonplus, obstacle, pause, quandary, uneasiness), goffaggine (clumsiness, gaucherie, lubberliness, uncouthness), difficolt (ado, arduousness, arduousnesses, difficulties, difficulty, fix, hitch, knot, problem, severity, stiffness, Strait, toughness, trial, trouble). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 無器" (clumsiness), きりきり舞い (a whirl, awkward, clumsy, constrained, corrugated, crude, going round and round, jagged, jerkiness, mashed sweet potato, milled, neat, notched, rushing a person off his feet, serrated, shrill, smart, spruce, stiff, stiff-mannered, stiltedness, strained atmosphere, thin and bony, unrefined), 不手際 (clumsiness, ineptitude). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ぎくしゃく (jerkiness, stiltedness), ぶきよう (awkward, clumsiness, clumsy, lack of ability, unskillfulness), ふてぎわ (clumsiness, ineptitude). (various references) | |
Manx | turloghid, staghylys (clumsiness), neuyeshid (improperness, impropriety, incongruity, incorrectness, inelegance), neulaueid, neuchooieid (incompetency, incongruity, inconvenience, unfitness), neuaashid (discontentedness, grievance, malaise, qualm), neuaashaght, mertraght (confusedness), maaigaght (clumsiness), lutchynys (blundering, loubberliness). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | awkwardnessay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | inabilidade (disability, disablement, inaptitude, incapability, incapacity, incompetence), grosseria (broadness, foulness, hog, horseplay, indelicacy, lumpishness, ribaldry, rough, roughness, rudeness, scurrility, vulgarism), embaraço (abashment, catch, cloggyness, complication, constrained, corner, difficulty, embarrassment, encumbrance, fix, mat, mess, mind-breaker, nonplus, obstacle, perplexity, pinch, quandary, rub, trouble), dificuldade (ado, check, checkout, complicacy, cramp, crux, deterrent, difficulty, distress, embarrassment, encumbrance, fix, handicap, hardness, hardship, hindrance, hitch, hobble, holdback, impediment, intricacy, knot, let, matter, mess, need, nicety, nodus, obstacle, obstruction, plummet, quagmire, ravel, rub, scrape, stress, trammels, trouble). (various references) | |
Romanian | strâmtoare (bottle-neck, clutch, constraint, extremity, fix, gorge, gullet, gut, jam, loss, narrow, narrows, necessity, scrape, sound, stew, Strait, trouble, unpleasant, want), stângãcie (clumsiness, gaucherie, left-handedness, lubberliness, lumpishness, maladroitness, ungainliness, unhandiness), neîndemânare (clumsiness, fumbling, left-handedness, lubber, lubberliness, lumpishness, rawness), jenã (abashment, bashfulness, discomfort, embarrassment, hindrance, reserve, shyness, squirm, timidity, uncomfortableness, uneasiness, want). (various references) | |
Russian | неуклюжесть (clumsiness, heaviness, left-handedness), неловкость (clumsiness, left-handedness, uneasiness). (various references) | |
Scottish | arrusg, gròig. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | nezgrapnost (clumsiness). (various references) | |
Spanish | torpeza (blunder, bungling, clumsiness, inability, obtuseness, roughness, rustiness), molestia (annoyance, bedevilment, bother, botheration, bug, disquiet, disturbance, hassle, hindrance, imposition, inconvenience, interference, nuisance, trouble, unrest, worry), dificultad (arduousness, dead weight, difficulty, hardness, intractability, objection, severity, trouble). (various references) | |
Swedish | obekvämlighet (inconvenience). (various references) | |
Turkish | aksilik (bile, contrariety, contrariness, contretemps, crossness, dourness, fractiousness, gruffness, hardness, hitch, ill luck, misadventure, misfortune, mishap, moodiness, moods, perversity, petulance, recalcitrance, reverse, rotten luck, setback, slip, slip up, sullenness, surliness, tantrum, testiness, trouble, vexatiousness), acemilik (clumsiness, greenness, ineptitude, inexperience, muff, rawness, verdancy), terslik (acerbity, acrimony, biliousness, contrariety, contrariness, crossness, cussedness, hitch, ill luck, misadventure, misfortune, moods, perversity, reverse, reversion, shortness, sullenness, tartness), sakarlık (clumsiness, maladroitness, unhandiness), kullanışsızlık (impracticability, unhandiness), beceriksizlik (bungle, clumsiness, fecklessness, foozle, gaucherie, inaptitude, incompetence, inefficacy, ineptitude, ineptness, lubberliness, muff, rudeness, unhandiness). (various references) | |
Turkmen | emelsizlik. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | скрутність (onerousness), незручність (discomfort, discommodity, inconvenience, nuisance, uneasiness), незграбність (angularity, backhandedness, clumsiness), неловкість, прикрість (affliction, annoyance, disappointment, grief, ire, nuisance). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | sự vụng về sự lúng túng, sự rắc rối, sự ngượng nghịu sự bất tiện, sự khó khăn sự khó xử. (various references) | |
Welsh | trwstaneiddiwch, chwithigrwydd. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "awkwardness": awkwardnesses. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "awkwardness" (pronounced Ä"kwerdnus) |
| 7 | -k w er d n u s | backwardness. |
| 5 | -er d n u s | tiredness. |
| 4 | -d n u s | badness, baldness, blandness, blindness, boldness, coldness, crookedness, farsightedness, fondness, goodness, handedness, hardness, indebtedness, kindness, madness, mindedness, nearsightedness, preparedness, redness, rudeness, sacredness, sadness, shortsightedness, shrewdness, soundness, spiritedness, vividness, weirdness, wickedness, wildness. |
| 3 | -n u s | abruptness, absoluteness, acuteness, aggressiveness, agribusiness, airworthiness, alertness, aloofness, alumnus, Anas, androgynous, anise, appropriateness, arbitrariness, assertiveness, astuteness, asynchronous, attentiveness, attractiveness, awareness, awfulness, bagginess, bearishness, bigness, bitterness, bituminous, blackness, bleakness, bluntness, bonus, boorishness, brashness, brightness, bullishness, business, callousness, calmness, carelessness, casualness, cautiousness, cavernous, cheapness, chitinous, cleanliness, cleanness, cleverness, closeness, cloudiness, clumsiness, cockiness, cohesiveness, Colonus, combativeness, compactness, competitiveness, completeness, consciousness, contagiousness, contentiousness, contrariness, Conus, coolness, correctness, coziness, craziness, creativeness, creditworthiness, creepiness, crispness, cuteness, dampness, darkness, Deaconess, deadliness, deafness, decisiveness, defensiveness, destructiveness, directness, disingenuousness, distinctiveness, divisiveness, dizziness, dreariness, drowsiness, drunkenness, dryness, dullness, eagerness, earnestness, edginess, effectiveness, elusiveness, emptiness, evenness, exogenous, eyewitness, faintness, fairness, fastness, fickleness, firmness, fitness, flatness, foolishness, forcefulness, forgiveness, forthrightness, foulness, fractiousness, frankness, freshness, friendliness, frothiness, fullness, funniness, furnace, gauntness, gayness, gelatinous, gentleness, genuineness, genus, ghastliness, gluttonous, governess, graciousness, greatness, greenness, grimness, hairiness, happiness, harmfulness, harness, harshness, heinous, helplessness, highness, hoarseness, holiness, homelessness, homesickness, homogenous, hopefulness, hopelessness, humanness, idleness, illness, inclusiveness, indecisiveness, indigenous, ineffectiveness, ineptness, inertness, intravenous, intrusiveness, inventiveness, joblessness, Johannes, larcenous, largeness, lateness, lawlessness, laziness, lenis, lightfastness, lightness, likeness, liveliness, loneliness, lousiness, luminous, Manus, meanness, membranous, menace, Minas, minus, monotonous, mountainous, mutinous, narrowness, nastiness, neatness, nervousness, newness, niceness, nitrogenous, nonbusiness, nonpoisonous, nosiness, nothingness, numbness, ominous, oneness, onus, openness, orderliness, otherness, outrageousness, outspokenness, pandanus, peacefulness, penis, permissiveness, persuasiveness, pervasiveness, pettiness, playfulness, poisonous, politeness, polygynous, pompousness, possessiveness, powerlessness, queasiness, quickness, quietness, raciness, randomness, rareness, ravenous, rawness, readiness, reasonableness, rebelliousness, recklessness, remoteness, resistiveness, resourcefulness, responsiveness, restiveness, restlessness, restrictiveness, richness, righteousness, rightness, riskiness, robustness, roominess, roughness, rowdiness, ruinous, ruthlessness, Salinas, sameness, scantiness, secretiveness, selfishness, selflessness, sensitiveness, separateness, seriousness, shakiness, shallowness, sharpness, shortness, shyness, sickness, silliness, sinus, skittishness, slackness, sleepiness, sloppiness, slovenliness, slowness, sluggishness, slyness, smallness, smoothness, smugness, softness, solitariness, squeamishness, starkness, steadfastness, steadiness, steepness, sternness, stiffness, stillness, stinginess, stoutness, strangeness, stubbornness, sturdiness, suddenness, suggestiveness, sweetness, swiftness, tardiness, tartness, tastiness, tenderness, tetanus, thickness, thinness, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, tightness, timeliness, togetherness, toughness, trustworthiness, truthfulness, ugliness, unconsciousness, uneasiness, unfairness, unhappiness, uniqueness, unpleasantness, unwieldiness, unwillingness, usefulness, vagueness, vastness, venous, viciousness, villainous, vindictiveness, voluminous, wariness, wastefulness, waterishness, weakness, weariness, weightlessness, wellness, wetness, whiteness, wholeness, wholesomeness, wilderness, willingness, wimpiness, wistfulness, witness, wonderfulness, worldliness, worthiness, wryness. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-d-e-k-n-r-s-s-w-w" | |
-3 letters: darkness, seawards, weasands. | |
-4 letters: answers, awakens, awkward, darkens, rawness, sanders, seawans, seaward, swanked, swanker, wanders, wardens, warsaws, weasand, wessand. | |
-5 letters: anears, answer, arenas, askers, awaked, awaken, awakes, awards, danker, darken, denars, dewans, dewars, drakes, eskars, kneads, narked, ranked, redans, resawn, resaws, sakers, sander, sansar, sarans, sarsen, sawers, seawan, sedans, sewans, sewars, skeans, snaked. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-d-e-k-n-r-s-s-w-w" | |
+2 letters: awkwardnesses. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Quotations: Familiar 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Translations: Modern | 9. Derivations 10. Rhymes 11. Anagrams 12. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
