喜樂美語
  1. 1笨拙的、不優雅的（動作或體態不協調）

    Moving in a way that does not look — awkward, , a bit uncoordinated. Think of a giraffe running, a person carrying a mattress up narrow , a tall teenager who has not yet learned where their arms are. It is used for people and animals in motion, and also for the way something looks when its shape makes movement awkward: an ungainly walk, an ungainly leap, an ungainly old . The tone is important. "Ungainly" is gentle. It is not an insult the way "" can be, and it is far kinder than "awkward" applied to a person's social manner. Writers often use it with fondness, especially about the young. It can also describe shape rather than motion — an ungainly piece of furniture, an ungainly building — meaning big, badly proportioned, hard to move around. This is a written, slightly literary word. In everyday Taiwanese-classroom English you would probably say "," and that is fine; but when you read novels, "ungainly" is the word that appears.

組成un-（不）+ gainly（優美、合宜的）+ -ly。gainly 來自古北歐語 gegn，意思是「合適、順手、直接」。有趣的是 gainly 這個正面的字現在幾乎沒人用了，反而只有否定的 ungainly 留了下來。

同家族的字

原始詞典資料6 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

ungainlyadj詞源 1/ʌnˈɡeɪnli/

  • 1

    Clumsy; lacking grace.

    • They being a very ſilly ſort of People, had no other way to ſhew their Spight and Reſentment, than by making Mouths at the Dutch as they paſſed by, and ſometimes Spitting upon them. To break them of that ungainly Cuſtom, we made a reſolution amongſt us, never to let any paſs by that did ſo, whether Old or Young, Man or Woman, without giving them a good Box on the Ear.
    • When the young scholar [Samuel Johnson] presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable study.
  • 2

    Gangling

  • 3

    Difficult to move or to manage; unwieldy.

    • My lady brought with her from England a most profane instrument, a lute of ungainlie height, at which Master Higginson looketh doubtfully as if it were an instrument of sin, and methinketh Mistresses Mary and Elizabeth Fenwick thinketh it also […]
  • 4

    obsoleteUnsuitable; unprofitable.

    • And this is the excellency and perfection of a Christian, infinitely above the reach of the proudest moralists; this is the repentance of a Christian, whereby he makes up those defects which were most eminently notorious in the heathen; this is the impression of the humbling spirit, which proud heathen nature was never stamped with, for it was not so much their ignorance in which they offended God,—though that was also full of guilt, as hath been proved,—as their misusing of their knowledge to ungainly ends, as either ambition, superstition, or for satisfying their curiosity, as partly hath, and for the present needs not further to be demonstrated.
    • For as she could not, alas, select / Twixt ye goodlie and ungainlie, / Why of course 'twas Actions must direct / Her goode opinion,—mainlie.

ungainlynoun詞源 1/ʌnˈɡeɪnli/

  • 1

    rareAn ungainly person or thing.

    • I was completely subdued:—hungry, cold, wet, and chilled, outside and inside, with the weather, and the place, and the people,—but that's a bull, for I saw nobody except two ungainly country footmen, and a fat groom of the chambers who took me to my room, and assigned me one of the ungainlies as valet.
    • 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.

ungainlyadv詞源 2/ʌnˈɡeɪnli/

  • 1

    obsoleteIn an ungainly or unbecoming manner; improperly; undeservedly, unduly; unsuitably.

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。