Crossword Dictionary
maladroit
maladroit - a
not adroit
Synonyms
awkward, butterfingered, cack-handed [British], clumsy, graceless, ham-fisted, ham-handed, handless, heavy-handed, left-handed, unhandy
Maladroit Comes From Old and Middle French
To understand the origin of "maladroit," you need to put together some Middle French and Old French building blocks. The first is the word mal, meaning "bad," and the second is the phrase a droit, meaning "properly." You can parse the phrase even further into the components a, meaning "to" or "at," and droit, meaning "right, direct, or straight." Middle French speakers put those pieces together as "maladroit" to describe the clumsy among them, and English speakers borrowed the word intact back in the 17th century. Its opposite, of course, is "adroit," which we adopted from the French in the same century.