See Also:MOVEMENT

1. Awkward as a bull in a china shop —Anon

   This still popular simile endures with many substitutions for the bull such as “A blind dog,”“A gorilla,”“A monkey.” Often, instead of a substitute comparison, a different context can lift a simile like this beyond the cliche; for example, “Like wild bulls in a china shop … are my awkward hands of love” from poet Delmore Schwartz’s journals and notes.

2. Awkward as learning newly learned —Adrienne Rich
3. Awkward in her movements, as if she had been in solitary for years —Ross Macdonald
4. Awkward … like a guest at a party to whose members he carried bad news he had no right to know, no right to tell —Hortense Calisher
5. Awkward like a leaden ballet dancer lifting a fat partner —Ed McBain
6. Awoke as stiff as if I’d been spray-starched —Jonathan Kellerman
7. Blunder and fumble like a moth … a rabbit caught in the glare of a torch —William Faulkner
8. Bumbled up to him like a mole —Wilfrid Sheed
9. Clumsy as two kids on their first date —Anon
10. Clumsy … like a leaky old engine with the driving belt slipping and steam escaping from every joint —Christopher Isherwood
11. Feel awkward like a boy on a date with an older girl —Bobbie Ann Mason
12. Graceless as a pelican on the ground —George Garrett
13. Had about as much grace as a hippopotamus in a bubble bath —Harry Prince
14. Has the grace of an arthritic elephant on roller skates —Corey Sandler
15. Moved thickly, like a clumsy, good-tempered horse —William Faulkner
16. Moving stiffly like a man in a body cast —Martin Cruz Smith
17. She ran on like a clumsy goat, trampling and trespassing on land that was preserved —Daphne du Maurier
18. Stiff as a gaffer —Richard Wilbur
19. Stiff as a line in Euclid —Saul Bellow
20. Stiff as a poker grew —Wallace Irwin
21. Stumbling about like a drunken bear —James Crumley
22. Uncoordinated as a rag doll —Dorothea Straus
23. Unwieldy as a pregnant elephant —Anon

all thumbs Awkward, inept; clumsy, butterfingered. A forerunner of the current expression appeared in John Hey wood’s Proverbs in 1546:

The phrase as we know it was in use by 1870:

flub the dub See RUINATION.

have two left feet To be unusually clumsy; uncoordinated, maladroit. The expression does not constitute an image of deformity, but an emphasis on the negative concepts of left as ‘gauche, awkward, clumsy.’