maladroit

adjective

mal·adroit ˌma-lə-ˈdrȯit

Synonyms of maladroit

: lacking adroitness : inept

The governor has been criticized for his maladroit handling of the budget crisis.

maladroitly adverb

maladroitness noun

Did you know?

Maladroit Comes From Old and Middle French

Maladroit is perhaps an awkward fit for casual speech—outside of the occasional Weezer album title, one most often encounters it in formal writing—but you can remember its meaning by breaking it down into its French building blocks. The first is the word mal, meaning "badly," which may be familiar from English words including malaise ("a vague sense of mental or moral ill-being") and malodorous ("having a bad odor"). The second is adroit, meaning "having or showing skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling situations." Middle French speakers put those pieces together as maladroit to describe the clumsy and incompetent among them, and English speakers borrowed the word intact. We'd adopted adroit from them a short time before.

Choose the Right Synonym for maladroit

awkward, clumsy, maladroit, inept, gauche mean not marked by ease (as of performance, movement, or social conduct).

awkward is widely applicable and may suggest unhandiness, inconvenience, lack of muscular control, embarrassment, or lack of tact.

periods of awkward silence

clumsy implies stiffness and heaviness and so may connote inflexibility, unwieldiness, or lack of ordinary skill.

a clumsy mechanic

maladroit suggests a tendency to create awkward situations.

a maladroit politician

inept often implies complete failure or inadequacy.

a hopelessly inept defense attorney

gauche implies the effects of shyness, inexperience, or ill breeding.

felt gauche and unsophisticated at formal parties

Examples of maladroit in a Sentence

The governor has been criticized for his maladroit handling of the budget crisis. some maladroit steering on her part caused the bicycle to go crashing into the bushes

Recent Examples on the Web

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DeSantis tried to take his show on the road via a quest for the presidential nomination, but his culture warfare didn’t obscure his maladroit skills on the stump. —Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 3 July 2025 After the election came a string of unflattering headlines about her alleged mismanagement of the vice president’s office and her sometimes maladroit communication of the president’s agenda, most notably on immigration. —Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Washington Post, 22 July 2024