Meaning

Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative..

Definitions by Sense

1. Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.
2. Done carelessly; slapdash.
3. Having or done with hands that are slack.
4. Done with hands or wrists that are slack.
5. Idly or carelessly.
6. A collection of slack-handed people.

Example Sentences

Their warmth stirred her up to be so busy and laudably benevolent; perhaps if he had been away she might have been idle and slack-handed; but I do not know.

It was the fate of the Creoles—possibly a climatic result—to be slack-handed and dilatory.

His autocracy had been transformed into a system of feudal baronies, with president Fitzsimmons as the slack-handed overseer.

Solomon had a thorough contempt for slothful, slack-handed farming, and lost no opportunity of giving drowsy ignorance a view of its own deformity, and its own certain fate.

On the whole a great deal of slack-handed service was put up with.

I blame the shoddy quality of Portuguese sea-charts for this, though doubtless the Portuguese would blame the compass, or the wind, or the water, or the Ceylonese, or the shape of the world, or the Moon, or anything else that might absolve their own slack-handed workmanship.

She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed, slack-handed clock.

The gun jiggled in a slack-handed grip, but the trigger finger looked tight.

Word Forms

• more slack-handed
• most slack-handed
• slackhanded

Related Words

When Should You Use Slack-handed?

Use slack-handed when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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