Slack-handed
adj, adv, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A collection of slack-handed people. uncountable
"But what saith the wise man of the sluggards and slack-handed, in so favourable an opportunity ?"
- 1 Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.
"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."
- 2 Done carelessly; slapdash.
"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."
- 3 Having or done with hands that are slack.
"She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed, slack-handed clock."
- 1 Done with hands or wrists that are slack.
"No less stunned, I stood there, too, slack-handed, empty of thought."
- 2 Idly or carelessly.
"Yet they sit slack-handed, doing nothing about it, unable to agree even among themselves."
Example
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."
Etymology
From slack + handed.
Related phrases
More for "slack-handed"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.