Word.ws English Dictionary

cackhanded

cackhanded is the alternative spelling of cack-handed.

Meaning of cack-handed

Adjective

cack-handed (comparative more cack-handed, superlative most cack-handed)

  1. Clumsy; inept.
    • Constance endeavoured to get eight little boys to dance also; but the little lads were to shy, what an old woman, speaking of her grandson, calls “too daffish and keck-handed to learn such aunty-praunty antics,” and all that Constance could get in the way of male support was to induce eight little...1905, Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell, chapter 4, in Spring in a Shropshire Abbey, London: Smith, Elder & Co., pages 177–178
  2. Left-handed.
    • A left-handed child would be held up to ridicule, and the hand tied to prevent its use. In some parts of England left-handers are called “cack-handed” […]1922, Edmund J. Sullivan, chapter 8, in Line: An Art Study, London: Chapman & Hall, page 88
  3. Back-handed.

Forms of cackhanded

comparativemore cackhanded
superlativemost cackhanded

Words formed from cackhanded

Questions about cackhanded

What is cackhanded the alternative spelling of?
Cackhanded is the alternative spelling of cack-handed.

Words near cackhanded in the dictionary

  1. cacked on
  2. cacked up
  3. Cacker
  4. cackerel
  5. cackerels
  6. cackhanded
  7. cackhandedly
  8. cackhandedness
  9. cackier
  10. cackiest
  11. cacking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cackhanded (page history and authors); cack-handed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cackhanded.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cackhanded. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.