ham-handed

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ham-hand·ed

(hăm′hăn′dĭd)

adj.

1. Lacking dexterity or skill; clumsy.

2. Lacking social grace or tact.

3. Having unusually large hands.

ham′-hand′ed·ly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ham′-hand`ed

adj.

clumsy, inept, or heavy-handed: a ham-handed apology.

[1915–20]

ham′-hand`ed•ness, n.

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Adj.

ham-handed - lacking physical movement skills, especially with the hands; "a bumbling mechanic"; "a bungling performance"; "ham-handed governmental interference"; "could scarcely empty a scuttle of ashes, so handless was the poor creature"- Mary H. Vorse

bumbling, butterfingered, ham-fisted, heavy-handed, handless, bungling, left-handed

maladroit - not adroit; "a maladroit movement of his hand caused the car to swerve"; "a maladroit translation"; "maladroit propaganda"

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References in periodicals archive ?

Smart filtering is the term the government has adopted for software that now allows it to censor sites less ham-handedly. To date an entire website with one page of objectionable material was blocked.

Gov't to 'smart filter' Instagram & Viber, rather than block them

In the first go, she has chased her political rivals oppressively ham-handedly. Throughout, she has kept Zia and her BNP under sizzling heat with no-hold-barred in emasculating them with debilitating administrative methods.

A big farce

Dramatizing the high-volume kegger that results in several teen fatalities and the subsequent puritanism of fictional Bomont, Tenn., the director ham-handedly invokes 9/11 and the Patriot Act before proceeding to follow the first "Footloose" step by step.

'Footloose' pas de deja vu

The legislature, however ham-handedly, has responded to nudge us toward an overdue correction.

Bioethics Forum: http://www.bioethicsforum.org: mew York's palliative care information act: flawed but needed

The Bush-era Galactica, with its election fraud, prison camps, insurgencies, and suicide bombings, was so ham-handedly focused on the present as to be the opposite of escape--a motionless immersion in the present's most narcissistic fantasies of powerlessness.