Meaning of slack-handed | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.
2. Done carelessly; slapdash.
3. Having or done with hands that are slack.

Examples

“Their warmth stirred her up to be so busy and laudably benevolent; perhaps if he had been away she might have⟳ been idle and slack-handed; but I do not know⟳.”

“It was the fate of the Creoles—possibly a climatic result⟳—to be slack-handed and dilatory.”

“His autocracy had been transformed into a system of feudal baronies, with president Fitzsimmons as the slack-handed overseer.”

“Solomon had a thorough contempt for slothful, slack-handed farming, and lost no opportunity of giving drowsy ignorance a view⟳ of its own⟳ deformity, and its own⟳ certain fate.”

“On the whole a great deal⟳ of slack-handed service was put⟳ up with.”

“I blame⟳ the shoddy quality of Portuguese sea-charts for this, though doubtless the Portuguese would blame⟳ the compass, or the wind, or the water, or the Ceylonese, or the shape⟳ of the world, or the Moon, or anything else that might absolve their own⟳ slack-handed workmanship.”

“She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed, slack-handed clock.”

“The gun jiggled in a slack-handed grip, but the trigger finger looked tight.”

“Edna gave us a slack-handed wave⟳ as I agitated the road gravel.”

CEFR level