ham-handed

American

[ham-han-did] / ˈhæmˈhæn dɪd /

especially British, ham-fisted

adjective

clumsy, inept, or heavy-handed.

a ham-handed approach to dealing with people that hurts a lot of feelings.

Other Word Forms

hamhandedness noun

Etymology

Origin of ham-handed

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Last month, following a ham-handed government attempt to ban most social-media apps, thousands of young protesters took to the streets of Kathmandu, the capital.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 8, 2025

That’s the bigger story that is being lost in the government’s egregious, ham-handed attempt to turn Ábrego García into an object lesson.

From Salon • Jul. 17, 2025

A number of missteps and misstatements - including a ham-handed June 2021 interview with NBC News presenter Lester Holt – damaged her standing and opened her to conservative attacks.

From BBC • Jul. 22, 2024

Greece’s foreign ministry made a ham-handed bid to get rid of the hot potato by sneaking Ocalan out of the country and trying to hide him in the Greek Embassy in Kenya.

From Seattle Times • May 31, 2023

As early as January 1990, sentiment on the Well had already begun to sour, and people had begun to grumble that "hackers" were getting a raw deal from the ham-handed powers-that-be.

From The Hacker Crackdown, law and disorder on the electronic frontier by Sterling, Bruce

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023