graceless

English

Etymology

From Middle English graceles; equivalent to grace +‎ -less.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹeɪsləs/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪsləs

Adjective

graceless (comparative more graceless, superlative most graceless)

1. Without grace.
   • c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], page 229, column 1:

     Such dutie as the ſubject owes the Prince, / Euen ſuch a woman oweth to her husband: / And when ſhe is froward, peeuiſh, ſullen, ſowre, / And not obedient to his honeſt will, / What is ſhe but a foule contending Rebell / And graceleſſe Traitor to her louing Lord?

   • 1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], epistle III, Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, […], George Ewing, […], and William Smith, […], →OCLC, page 19, lines 306–307:

     For Modes of Faith let graceleſs Zealots fight; / His can't be wrong whoſe Life is in the right.

   • 1881, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sonnet XXXII, “Equal Troth,”, in The House of Life‎^[1]:

     Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love; / For how should I be loved as I love thee? — / I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely / All gifts that with thy queenship best behove; — […]

   • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 3, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 46:

     There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the corners— […]

   • 1972, Roland Barthes, “Toys”, in Annette Lavers, transl., Mythologies, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published 1957, page 54:

     Current toys are made of a graceless material, the product of chemistry, not of nature.

   • 1995, Susan Sontag, "The Art of Fiction No. 143," Interview with Edward Hirsch published in The Paris Review, No. 137, Winter, 1995, p. 7,

     [Hirsch:] Do you mind being called an intellectual? [Sontag:] Well, one never likes to be called anything. […] I suppose there will always be a presumption of graceless oddity—especially if one is a woman.

2. Lacking gracefulness.
   • 1961, Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy, New York: Signet, page 64:

     The boy sketched his roughhewn young contadino just in from the fields, naked except for his brache, kneeling to take off his clodhoppers; the flesh tones a sunburned amber, the figure clumsy, with graceless bumpkin muscles; but the face transfused with light as the young lad gazed up at John.

3. Without the grace of God.
   • 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

     For it was approaching that uncanny time of year, the festival of Beltane, when the auld pagans were wont to sacrifice to their god Baal. In this season warlocks and carlines have a special dispensation to do evil, and Alison waited on its coming with graceless joy.

4. (archaic) Unfortunate.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 8, page 39:

     Much was he grieued with that graceleſſe chaunce, / Yet from the wound no drop of bloud there fell, / But wondrous paine, that did the more enhaunce / His haughtie courage to aduengement fell: / Smart daunts not mighty harts, but makes them more to ſwell.

Synonyms

• clumsy

Antonyms

• graceful

Derived terms

• gracelessly
• gracelessness