Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ungainly in a sentence

17 example sentences · adjective, noun, adverb

Ungainly means clumsy; lacking grace. Example: “The obese woman, ungainly on land, moved with a kind of cetacean grace in the water.”

Examples of ungainly by meaning

adjectiveClumsy; lacking grace.

  • Photographs of the Fowler Moguls had always given me the impression of an ungainly design: the sight of them more then confirmed it.1944 November and December, Talisman, “A Broadening Horizon”, in Railway Magazine, page 339
  • His body, though thin, looked oversized and ungainly, his limbs poorly knit together; he appeared to conquer his tendency to awkwardness by making only the smallest, most deliberate of movements.1962, Edward [Ronald] Weismiller, chapter XI, in The Serpent Sleeping, New York, N.Y.: Putnam, →OCLC; republished London; Portland, Or....

nounAn ungainly person or thing.

  • Long lists resulting from the listing technique will often become short poems after you and the student writer's classmates help cull out the unnecessaries, the ungainlies, and the unworthies.1966, Stephen Dunning, Teaching Literature to Adolescents: Poetry, Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Company, →OCLC, page 32
  • One of the ungainlies came off, and there was a pile-up of horses in one corner, but she, the gray, and the brown mare avoided it neatly.1987, Anne McCaffrey, The Lady, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, →ISBN

More sentences with ungainly

  • The obese woman, ungainly on land, moved with a kind of cetacean grace in the water.From the entry cetacean
  • Round, normal-size epsila (l. 3) contrast with a large, ungainly epsilon (l. 7).1983, The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, volume 11, →ISBN, page 159, →ISBN. From the entry epsila
  • Thousands of ungainly black-beaked heads would periscope and freeze in the direction of the approaching intruder.1951, National Geographic Magazine: Volume 99. From the entry periscope
  • It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road.1915 September, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Boy Grows Up”, in The Research Magnificent, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry gaunt
  • Its short hind legs give a most ungainly gait, though it runs with surprising speed when pursued.1901, Wallace Rice, Animals: a Popular Natural History of Wild Beasts, Duffield and Co., published 1909, page 112. From the entry despicability
  • But not to build ungainly factories with.1982, Günter Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim, Headbirths, or, The Germans Are Dying Out, New York, N.Y: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich…. From the entry slummification
  • Sullen now, with stultified spleen, Mrs Dibble grappled her crutches and levered herself upright after an ungainly struggle.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 150. From the entry lever
  • There came maulers; huge, ungainly flying fortresses of stupendous might.1940 January, E[dward] E[lmer] Smith, “Gray Lensman; Part IV: Conclusion”, in Astounding Science-Fiction, volume XXIV, number 5, New York…. From the entry gargantuanly
  • Tall and ungainly, Jantzen could wallop a baseball over the outfielders, but he was an "ice wagon"—too slow to get past third.1987, Bill O'Neal, The Texas League, 1888–1987: A Century of Baseball, Austin, T.X.: Eakin Press, →ISBN, page 290. From the entry ice wagon
  • Paisano, well named after that ungainly but swift-running bird, struck into his long lope that ate up the ground like a strip of macaroni.1903 February, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Hygeia at the Solito”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VIII, number 2, New…. From the entry paisano
  • The locomotive was black, an ungainly contraption led by the triangular snout of the cowcatcher, though there would be few animals where this engine was headed.2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 83. From the entry cowcatcher
  • There's also something as well that describes some person who may not be ugly, may not be very ugly facially but there's something about them that's ungainly.2004, "Jeffrey Hinds comes up with a Barbadian word to describe someone who's unattractive," Voices at www.bbc.co.uk (retrieved 25 Mar 2008). From the entry obzocky
  • As they were so engaged another taxi drove up and a large, untidy-looking, ungainly bearded man in a suit of Harris tweed stepped out of it.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html)…. From the entry Harris tweed

Meaning of ungainly

  1. adjective Clumsy; lacking grace.
  2. adjective Gangling.
  3. adjective Difficult to move or to manage; unwieldy.

Full definition of ungainly

Questions about ungainly in a sentence

How do you use ungainly in a sentence?
Ungainly is used as an adjective, noun and adverb. For example: “The obese woman, ungainly on land, moved with a kind of cetacean grace in the water.”
What is a short sentence with ungainly?
“But not to build ungainly factories with.”
What does ungainly mean?
Ungainly means clumsy; lacking grace.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ungainly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use ungainly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ungainly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.