Word of the Day

gauche \GOHSH\, adjective:
Lacking social polish; tactless; awkward; clumsy.

He was largely exempted from the formal socializing he said he found so hard to manage, flustered and gauche in polite company as he had always been.
--John Sturrock, "Well on the Way to Paranoia," [1] New York Times, July 28, 1991

He was by nature intellectual, shy, even gauche and he always believed he lacked the common touch.
--"Editor whose legacy was diversity," [2] Irish Times, October 9, 1999

The audience's performance was altogether more gauche, with scores of people in the stalls constantly turning round to gawp at Mick Jagger seated ten rows back.
--Noreen Taylor, "How was it for him?" [3] Times (London), August 3, 2000

Gauche is from the French for left, awkward.

The left side of anything is often considered to be unlucky or bad, and our language reflects this. A "left-handed compliment," one that is insincere, backhanded, or dubious, is not one you are happy to receive; a "left-handed oath" is one not intended to be binding. Sinister, Latin for left, suggests or threatens evil. Gauche is tactless, awkward and clumsy, but droit, the French word for right, gives us adroit, "skillful," and dexter, the Latin for right, gives us dexterous (also meaning skillful). If you are ambidextrous, able to use both hands with equal facility, then, etymologically speaking, you have right hands on both sides (ambi-, "on both sides"). Left itself comes from Old English lyft, left, "weak, useless," since it names the hand which in most people is weaker.