24 adjectives to describe awkwardness

It was not pride, nor sternness, but a sort of habitual shamefacedness, that kept far back in each soul those feelings which are the most beautiful in their outcome; but after a while, the habit became so fixed a nature, that a caressing or affectionate expression could not have passed the lips of one to another without a painful awkwardness.

Even in that moment of astonishment he noticed that she carried her left arm close to her body, with a curious awkwardness.

The Duke, not unmoved, bowed lowly in return, but unfortunately backing as he did so, tripped himself up with characteristic awkwardness, and tumbled backwards on a heap of broken stones prepared for the road, with his heels in the air, and exhibiting to his unfaithful Tuscans and ungrateful Duchy, as a last remembrance of him, a full view of a part of his person rarely put forward on such occasions.

A clumsy awkwardness characterises every movement of the blockhead; folly imprints its mark on every gesture, and so do genius and a reflective nature.

I received his compliment with a conscious awkwardness.

"I thought Mrs. Spragg would know there's no earthly use trying to take Paul from me," he said with a desperate awkwardness of entreaty, and Mr. Spragg startled him by replying: "I presume his grandma thinks he'll belong to her more if we keep him in the family.

They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.

The sooty mass of chronicles and historical books and cartularies accumulated, and the stammering grace, the often exquisite awkwardness of the monks, placing the poetic remains of antiquity in a ragout, were dead.

Probably his long legs and arms, which were exceedingly supple, and were always swinging about with a certain juvenile awkwardness, contributed much to the youthfulness of his appearance.

If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of your limbsany awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment of this mighty wizard instantly communicates symmetry and elegance.

What says Note 13th of literary awkwardness?

It was the mistakethe awkwardness of a moment.

Since they had met in France he had guarded the secret carefullyoften by an air of indifference which fitted him well, a relic of his years of seclusion, and a native awkwardness which was always more or less in evidence before women.

Suppose a child carelessly pulls off the wing of an insect; it is only a piece of nervous awkwardness, but the insect is done for, and the child ashamed and irritated, tears the poor creature to pieces to relieve his own feelings.

Nick suppressed a groan, not at his task, but at his own oxlike awkwardness (so he anathematized it) that made a torture of a delicious privilege.

And there was about his management of his arms a peculiar awkwardness which only the very strongest of men exhibitas if they were burdened by the weight of their mere dangling hands.

" Wilder bowed, and again faced the ladies, whom he had just been about to quit, like one who felt he had no right to intrude a moment longer than had been necessary to recover that which had been lost by his pretended awkwardness.

"The next day Antony invited her to supper, and was very desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it that he was himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit and his rustic awkwardness.

I was so self-conscious, so irresolute, so nonplussed, that in sheer awkwardness, like a girl at a party who does not know what to do with her hands, I pushed the revolver off the satchel, and idly unfastened the catch of the satchel.

Besides his ugliness, which is of the worst sortthat is to say, the shabbiesthe has a limp on one leg that gives a peculiarly one-sided awkwardness to his gait; but, independently of his great merit in being May's pet, he has other merits which serve to account for that phenomenonbeing, beyond all comparison the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animal that I have ever known; and that is saying much.

During the last year of her life at home she had shot up very fast, and she was now a tall, slender presence, preserved from even the usual touching and delightful awkwardness of seventeen by the trained dexterity and strength with which she handled her body, as muscular, for all its rounded slimness, as a boy's.

But he, being ever far wiser than I imagined, guarded himself craftily from any such blundering awkwardness.

she exclaimed as Johnnie Mortimer produced himself in all his youthful awkwardness, and advanced, looking a good deal abashed.

Headlong Hall The novels of Thomas Love Peacock still find admirers among cultured readers, but his extravagant satire and a certain bookish awkwardness will never appeal to the great novel-reading public.

24 adjectives to describe  awkwardness