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Definition
lacking social polish- She said KAEC in a way that implied it was gauche and silly, a distraction from more essential things.Dave Eggers -- A Hologram for the King
- He was a bulky, gauche, noisy, humorous man, with narrow eyes, a rustic complexion, large red hands, and brilliant clothes.Sinclair Lewis -- Main Street
- And then, it would appear that she realized she should make an effort, and her manner would become odd and gauche.Doris Lessing -- The Grass is Singing
- It would be terribly gauche of me if I did not know how to value your offer of friendship, a friendship with you for his sake.Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain
- Constance, the woman in our group, rolled her eyes as if she thought this was so gauche.Abraham Verghese -- Cutting for Stone
- I heard the words gauche and ingénue.Gloria Whelan -- Listening for Lions
- Feeling that his question was somewhat gauche, he smiled angrily.Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Idiot
- You wouldn't be as gauche as to ask, "Hey, are you related to the guy who makes vacuum cleaners?Julia Alvarez -- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
- Do you mean that I have been gauche and rude?E.M. Forster -- Howards End
- She wore the same expression that she had done on our first meeting, when I dropped my gloves so gauchely on the floor.Daphne du Maurier -- Rebecca
- If you drop your bow and smell like a brewery, it will look gauche.Gayle Forman -- If I Stay
- And for that reason, in spite of his gaucheness (in her eyes) she was inclined to tolerate him—to see how he would do.Theodore Dreiser -- An American Tragedy
- I had no idea what I was about to say—doubtless some gauche words of comfort—but it was she who spoke first, behind hands clenched to a tear-stained face.William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
- How gauche can you get?Alfred Bester -- The Demolished Man
- The air of collective displacement, the impermanence of life in wartime and the gauche personalities of the more recent arrivals tended to dissipate my own sense of not belonging.Maya Angelou -- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- In France and Italy, the words for "left"—gauche and sinistra—came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity, and correctness.Dan Brown -- The Da Vinci Code
- It was two days before school started and they were sitting in the King James Mall's terraced Frenchinspired cafe, Rive Gauche, drinking red wine, comparing Vogue to Teen Vogue, and gossiping.Sara Shepard -- Pretty Little Liars
- I soon discovered, however, that most of my neighbors here on the wrong side of both sets of tracks were sympathetic to my written assaults on what one of them called "the gauche and vulgar among us."John Grogan -- Marley & Me
- Finally, in desperation and realizing it was lunchtime in Paris, Alex placed ordinary, unsafe overseas telephone calls to several cafés on the Rive Gauche, finding an old Deuxième acquaintance at one on the rue de Vaugirard.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Ultimatum
- And as natural, as conventional, as youthfully gauche, as eternally beautiful and authentic as those ancient sounds was the talk of Martin and Leora in that passionate half-hour when each found in the other a part of his own self, always vaguely missed, discovered now with astonished joy.Sinclair Lewis -- Arrowsmith
(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means state or degree of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)