unwieldy
/ʌnˈwiːldi
/adjective (unwieldier, unwieldiest)
1(Of an object) difficult to move because of its size, shape, or weight: huge, unwieldy arc lamps...
- So the books that you read shouldn't be too unwieldy in weight, nor contain particularly tight typesetting or small font size.
- The mask's unwieldy construction made it difficult to fall asleep.
- But their size makes them unwieldy in city streets, and their acceleration is not tremendous.
Synonyms
cumbersome, unmanageable, unhandy, unmanoeuvrable;
awkward, difficult, clumsy, ungainly;
massive, heavy, hefty, bulky, weighty, ponderous
informal hulking, clunky
1.1(Of a system) too large or disorganized to function efficiently: the benefits system is unwieldy and unnecessarily complex...
- Fiba is an unwieldy bureaucracy that is not much concerned with policing its teams.
- Critics say the plan would create an unwieldy bureaucracy with a hidden agenda.
- The project of fixing our political system is an unwieldy one for those of us with a theoretical bent.
Derivatives
unwieldily
- One of the reasons things have gotten unwieldily is that the replace function is not being used.
- This is the approach that he takes in assembling the somewhat unwieldily titled Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street.
- However, it's still only on big rear projection sets which are rather unwieldily huge and expensive.
unwieldiness
- That fear became an even greater factor when, due to African resistance and rebellion and the unwieldiness of slave-run plantation industrialisation, the slave trade was abolished in 1807.
- And last week the idea of positioning it using an RAF Chinook was abandoned when bad weather and the sheer unwieldiness of the cargo defeated the airlift.
- Despite the word's unwieldiness, then, I would propose that mimesis and anti-mimesis confront each other-optically, materially, figuratively-in Triptyque through a logic of ‘photo-scotomization.’
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'lacking strength, infirm'): from un-1 'not' + wieldy (in the obsolete sense 'active').
The early meaning recorded was ‘lacking strength, infirm’. The word is composed of the prefix un- ‘not’ and wieldy in the obsolete sense ‘active’, from the Old English wield ‘rule, direct’. Unwieldy has meant ‘huge and awkward in shape’ since the late 16th century.