Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Difficult to handle or manage; unwieldy.
  • adjective Lacking manual skill or dexterity.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not handy, in any sense; awkward; inconvenient.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Clumsy; awkward.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not handy, unapt, clumsy, not dexterous.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It seems that everyone wants to recycle, but some consider the process either too futuristic or too unhandy.

    AfterGlow Chair – Luminous Chair Made from Recycled Milk Jugs 2010

  • See he's extremely unhandy, and these were the first blinds he's ever hung and he did it brilliantly!

    EXHAUSTED! Lauren Thomas 2009

  • It's unhandy at 300 yards, but then there's not a lot of shooting at 300 yards over there.

    The .375 H&H: Fraud or Scam? 2008

  • Next thing you know, my bathtub drain clogged and, being an unhandy single head of household with a knack for networking with all manner of service pros, I picked up the phone to call my plumber, who'd previously told me never to use Draino on antique pipes in an old house.

    Janet Carlson: Popular Mechanics: A Modern Woman's Heartthrob 2009

  • It is a damned unhandy thing to hunt with in a lot of other situations, too.

    Why Shorter is Better 2007

  • The Hawken brothers used the Kentucky as a model for their guns, but the barrels were much shorter (26 to 38 inches), because their users had discovered that a long-barreled rifle, regardless of its advantages, was a damned unhandy thing to hunt with from horseback.

    Why Shorter is Better 2007

  • Last weekend I asked my very handy dad to come over and replace a broken faucet in the kitchen since J and I are so very unhandy.

    Archive 2007-11-01 Tokyoastrogirl 2007

  • Last weekend I asked my very handy dad to come over and replace a broken faucet in the kitchen since J and I are so very unhandy.

    Tuna Toast Tokyoastrogirl 2007

  • Yea, yea, said my friend, I know what thou wouldest: I have been no unhandy devil to thee this long while, and thou wouldst fain keep me still; but now I will be devil no longer, on this earth at least, but will die and take my luck of it.

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles 2007

  • Civ. professors from Trenton State with time on their hands have constructed a replica Pilgrim town with three windowless, dirt-floor pilgrim houses, trucked-in period barnyard animals, and lots of authentic but unhandy Pilgrim implements, built a hand-adzed paled fence, laid in a subsistence garden and produced old-timey clothes and authentically inadequate footwear for the Pilgrims themselves.

    The Lay of the Land (II) Bruce Schauble 2006

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  • My father was unable to teach me how to drive, nor did his bravery in the face of pain produce any satisfying imitation. I was never able to fill my face with his kind of hateful countenance - so compelling - nor could I match his vituperative skills, the stream of complaint of which he was capable, possible because much of it was directed at me. I was sportless, unhandy, an indoorsman, mental. But I did learn from my father how to be a bigot.

    - William Gass, The Tunnel

    June 5, 2009