unskilful
/ʌnˈskɪlfʊl
/ /ʌnˈskɪlf(ə)l/(also chiefly US unskillful)
adjective
Not having or showing skill: though kind and willing, she was unskilful...
- In any art the specialist, even if he is unskillful, is always superior to the most talented amateur.
- Present government has a unskillful and clumsy economic policy.
- It occurs to me that this may be, at least in part, because they are unusually unskillful and unsceptical users of the medium.
Synonyms
inexpert, incompetent, inept, unskilled, clumsy, awkward, maladroit, unhandy, amateur, amateurish, unprofessional, inexperienced, untrained, unpractised, crude, rude, unsophisticated, gauche, fumbling, bungling, blundering, botching
informal ham-fisted, ham-handed, cack-handed, cowboy, not up to scratch
Derivatives
unskilfully
- At one point the nurse left the room, leaving the dentist to rather unskillfully wield both drill and suction device.
- It is in a cellar, decorated not unskilfully by a graffiti artist.
- The congregation, who had been expecting an unskillfully played favorite hymn of Ruth's, was in hushed amazement, for it was a technically demanding piece.
unskilfulness
- When Nicholas Pryor from Nashville, Tennessee, wrote him about problems with his tin roof Jefferson speculated, ‘If your tin covering has failed, it must have been from unskilfulness.’
- There is no apology for a man if he puts another in so dangerous and hazardous a situation by his treatment of him, that some degree of unskilfulness and mistaken treatment of himself may possibly accelerate the fatal catastrophe.
- An error in judgment has long been distinguished from an act of unskilfulness or carelessness or due to lack of knowledge.