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# Word of The Day
- URL: https://goodoil.news/word-of-the-day-20/
- Published: 2024-07-10T18:15:05.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-10T18:15:05.000Z
- Author: The Editor
- Tags: General

**Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 10, 2024 is:**

**ungainly** • \\un-GAYN-lee\\ • *adjective*  

*Ungainly* usually describes someone or something moving in an awkward or clumsy way, or the awkward, clumsy movements themselves. It can also describe an object that is difficult to handle (especially because of being large or heavy), or someone or something that has an awkward appearance.

// While seals are *ungainly* on land, they are beautifully agile swimmers.

// Getting the *ungainly* couch up the stairs was a real chore.

// The creature is large and *ungainly*.

[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ungainly?ref=goodoil.news)

**Examples:**  

"\[Composer, Gioachino\] Rossini, who was just 25 at the time, and his [librettist](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/librettist?ref=goodoil.news) Jacopo Feretti turned this 'Cinderella' into a comedy. It contains all kinds of farcical elements, including hidden identities and the wonderfully exaggerated stepsisters, who are delightfully mean, self-involved and *ungainly*." — Kyle MacMillan, *The Chicago Sun Times*, 22 Jan. 2024

**Did you know?**  

What do you have to gain by knowing the root of *ungainly*? Plenty. The *gain* in *ungainly* is an obsolete English adjective meaning "direct" that ultimately comes from the Old Norse preposition *gegn*, meaning "against." (It is unrelated to the noun in "economic [gains](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gain?ref=goodoil.news)" or the verb in "[gain](https://bit.ly/3Xmxo8p?ref=goodoil.news) an advantage"; those came to English by way of Anglo-French.) *Ungainly* can describe someone who is clumsy, as in "a tall, ungainly man"; or something that causes you to feel clumsy when you try to handle it, as in "a car with ungainly controls"; or something that simply looks awkward and out of place, as in "an ungainly strip mall."