English

Alternative forms

• slackhanded

Adjective

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

1. Careless and inactive; lacking focus or initiative.
   • 1867, Rhoda Broughton, Not wisely, but too well: A Novel, page 155:

     Their warmth stirred her up to be so busy and laudably benevolent; perhaps if he had been away she might have been idle and slack-handed; but I do not know.

   • 2000, George Washington Cable, Creoles of Louisiana, ISBN 1455603139:

     It was the fate of the Creoles—possibly a climatic result—to be slack-handed and dilatory.

   • 2015, James Neff, Mobbed Up, ISBN 1504007352:

     His autocracy had been transformed into a system of feudal baronies, with president Fitzsimmons as the slack-handed overseer.

2. Done carelessly; slapdash.
   • 1854, The Valley Farmer: A Monthly Journal of Agriculture, Volumes 6-7:

     Solomon had a thorough contempt for slothful, slack-handed farming, and lost no opportunity of giving drowsy ignorance a view of its own deformity, and its own certain fate.

   • 1913, Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler, ‎Franklin Lafayette Riley, & ‎James Curtis Ballagh, The South in the Building of the Nation, page 206:

     On the whole a great deal of slack-handed service was put up with.

   • 2007, Noah Wardrip-Fruin & ‎Pat Harrigan, Second Person: Role-playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, page 372:

     I blame the shoddy quality of Portuguese sea-charts for this, though doubtless the Portuguese would blame the compass, or the wind, or the water, or the Ceylonese, or the shape of the world, or the Moon, or anything else that might absolve their own slack-handed workmanship.

3. Having or done with hands that are slack.
   • 1999, Caroline Adderson, A History of Forgetting, page 353:

     She motions with the needle across the station to the paralysed, slack-handed clock.

   • 2001, Simon Bucher-Jones & Kelly Hale, Grimm Reality, ISBN 0563538414:

     The gun jiggled in a slack-handed grip, but the trigger finger looked tight.

   • 2007, Ed Lynskey, The Blue Cheer, ISBN 0809556677, page 149:

     Edna gave us a slack-handed wave as I agitated the road gravel.

Adverb

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

1. Done with hands or wrists that are slack.
   • 2011, Geraldine McCaughrean, Not the End of the World, ISBN 0192732935:

     No less stunned, I stood there, too, slack-handed, empty of thought.

   • 2013, Jeff Gulvin, The Aden Vanner Novels, ISBN 1480418412:

     Gallyon took his glass and held it slack-handed, elbow resting on the arm of his chair.

   • 2013, Jeff Gulvin, Sleep No More, ISBN 1480418323:

     Ninja offered the phone, slack-handed. The Wasp took it from him.

   • 2013, Thomas Williams, The Moon Pinnace, ISBN 1480474541:

     Upon its remains Miles danced slack-handed and slack-footed, a comic imitation of a marionette, and John saw that in Miles there was no real danger, that his object had been simply to gain Loretta's attention.

2. Idly or carelessly.
   • 1940, Bob Brown, Can we co-operate?, page 127:

     Yet they sit slack-handed, doing nothing about it, unable to agree even among themselves.

   • 1957, Janice Holt Giles, The Believers, page 15:

     If I told her the same thing she only giggled and said, "Yessum," and then, slack-handed, went right ahead and ironed a dozen wrinkles into the simplest piece.

   • 1966, Nicholas Monsarrat, Life is a Four-letter Word, page 463:

     The rest of the world stood by, slack-handed, while the Abyssinians fought our battle with spears and even bows-and- arrows, and shook their fists against the metal falling from the sky, and died for a promise which had been a lie from the very beginning.

   • 2010, Bella Bathurst, The Lighthouse Stevensons, ISBN 0007358970:

     Accounts still exist of sailors watching slack-handed from the gunwhales while one of their colleagues drowned.

Noun

slack-handed ‎(uncountable)

1. A collection of slack-handed people.
   • 1849, William Evans & ‎Thomas Evans, The Friends' Library, page 74:

     But what saith the wise man of the sluggards and slack-handed, in so favourable an opportunity ?

   • 1857, Anne Marsh-Caldwell, The Rose of Ashurst - Volume 1:

     But you see, sir," turning to me, " I'm not one as has been brought up among the slack-handed of these days.

   • 2000, Lee Ann Sandweiss, Seeking St. Louis: Voices from a River City, 1670-2000, ISBN 1883982111, page v:

     And also there were nights when one stair in a creaking flight, where darkies strained on hawsers or slack-handed loped between the sheds