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maladroit

used in a sentence
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Definition not adroit
  • She gazed at him, touched by the discomfort he seemed to suffer over his own maladroitness.
    William Styron  --  Sophie's Choice
(Editor's note:  The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)
  • "Maladroit," Bernard called him once, and the name stuck.
    Orson Scott Card  --  Ender's Game
  • Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.
    Thomas Hardy  --  Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  • Why did you so maladroitly restore me the handkerchief?
    Alexandre Dumas  --  The Three Musketeers
  • It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations.
    George Eliot  --  The Mill on the Floss
  • Her maladroit fumblings appalled her, and once she burst into tears when, trying to squeeze out some cosmetic lotion from an ordinary plastic tube, she applied such careless force that the stuff gushed out all over her and ruined a new dress.
    William Styron  --  Sophie's Choice
  • " "The snare is rather MALADROIT for the cardinal," replied the young man, smiling.
    Alexandre Dumas  --  The Three Musketeers
  • They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats.
    James Joyce  --  Ulysses

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