ungainly

Clumsy; lacking grace.

They being a very ſilly ſort of People, had no other way to ſhew their Spight and Reſentment, than by making Mouths at the Dutch as they paſſed by, and ſometimes Spitting upon them. To break them of that ungainly Cuſtom, we made a reſolution amongſt us, never to let any paſs by that did ſo, whether Old or Young, Man or Woman, without giving them a good Box on the Ear.

When the young scholar [Samuel Johnson] presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable study.

Difficult to move or to manage; unwieldy.

My lady brought with her from England a most profane instrument, a lute of ungainlie height, at which Master Higginson looketh doubtfully as if it were an instrument of sin, and methinketh Mistresses Mary and Elizabeth Fenwick thinketh it also […]

Unsuitable; unprofitable.

And this is the excellency and perfection of a Christian, infinitely above the reach of the proudest moralists; this is the repentance of a Christian, whereby he makes up those defects which were most eminently notorious in the heathen; this is the impression of the humbling spirit, which proud heathen nature was never stamped with, for it was not so much their ignorance in which they offended God,—though that was also full of guilt, as hath been proved,—as their misusing of their knowledge to ungainly ends, as either ambition, superstition, or for satisfying their curiosity, as partly hath, and for the present needs not further to be demonstrated.

For as she could not, alas, select / Twixt ye goodlie and ungainlie, / Why of course 'twas Actions must direct / Her goode opinion,—mainlie.

An ungainly person or thing.

I was completely subdued:—hungry, cold, wet, and chilled, outside and inside, with the weather, and the place, and the people,—but that's a bull, for I saw nobody except two ungainly country footmen, and a fat groom of the chambers who took me to my room, and assigned me one of the ungainlies as valet.

Long lists resulting from the listing technique will often become short poems after you and the student writer's classmates help cull out the unnecessaries, the ungainlies, and the unworthies.

In an ungainly or unbecoming manner; improperly; undeservedly, unduly; unsuitably.