hamfisted
hamfisted is the alternative form of ham-fisted.
hamfisted is the simple past and past participle of hamfist.
Meaning of ham-fisted
Adjective
ham-fisted (comparative more ham-fisted, superlative most ham-fisted)
- Lacking skill in physical movement with the hands; clumsy.
- "God damn and blast all you hamfisted yokels!" he was saying. "And you, sir, down there. Take that grin off your face and be more careful, or I'll have you clapped under hatches to sail with us today. Easy, there, easy! Christ, rum at seven guineas an anker isn't meant to be dropped like pig iron!"1938 April, C[ecil] S[cott] Forester [pseudonym; Cecil Louis Troughton Smith], chapter V, in A Ship of the Line, Greenwich edition, London: Michael Joseph, published 1951 (February 1962 printing)...
- Synonyms:
- cack-handed, ham-handed, heavy-handed, mutton-fisted, undexterous
- Lacking skill in general; incompetent.
- [Stephen] Harper has a few weeks' grace, during which he and his ham-fisted finance minister, Jim Flaherty, can ponder the error of their ways.2008 December 5, “Everyone benefits from prorogue”, in Michael Den Tandt, editor, The Sun Times, volume 156, number 285, Owen Sound, Ont.: Osprey Media Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page A4, column 1
- Synonyms:
- bungling, amateurish, backwards, bad, clumsy, ham-handed, inapt, incapable, incompetent, ineffective
- Antonyms:
- able, artful, habile, accomplished, adept, adroit, apt, capable, competent, consummate
Meaning of hamfist
Verb
hamfist (third-person singular simple present hamfists, present participle hamfisting, simple past and past participle hamfisted)
- To handle crudely.
- We had an open race and clocks were being read in the clubroom and I had the dubious pleasure of opening the clocks and taking out the ribbons, reckon I’d never make a clock ‘fixer’ the way I was hamfisting through the job, the old Toulets and Benzings were OK but it happened!!1972, “Scottish Racing Section”, in Britain’s Year Book of Pigeon Racing, Weybridge, Surrey: Pigeon Racing News & Gazette, →OCLC, page 227
Words formed from hamfisted
Questions about hamfisted
- What is hamfisted the alternative form of?
- Hamfisted is the alternative form of ham-fisted.
Words near hamfisted in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hamfisted (page history and authors); ham-fisted (page history and authors); hamfist (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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