clunky
Americanadjective
adjective
-
making a clunking noise
-
informal ponderously ungraceful or unsophisticated
clunky boots
-
awkward or unsophisticated
then you guffaw at clunky dialogue
Etymology
Origin of clunky
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.
See Examples For:
Like a book publisher shaping a clunky early draft into a bestseller, an executive at the company suggested the scientists punch up the language, which they did.
From Salon ● Jun. 26, 2026
This feast of gorgeous tunes fell prey to a clunky English translation by Edmund Tracey and unidiomatic conducting by Ramón Tebar, making it dull rather than sublime.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
The clunky machine had around the same amount of computing power as a modern-day toaster.
From MarketWatch ● May 23, 2026
The Wrap said "at times it betrays its amateur beginnings with clunky plotting."
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
She doesn’t laugh or blink, just gazes out at me from behind these clunky glasses that almost cover her face.
From "All The Bright Places" by Jennifer Niven
Making it even broader and clunkier won’t help.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 21, 2025
In reality, the transition towards that future is a little clunkier — and a little more fraught with questions about whether it’s the one we really want.
From Salon ● Jan. 22, 2024
The analytic mode of reasoning is clunkier and more time consuming, often exemplified by “reason, mathematics, and cost-benefit analysis,” says Slovic.
From National Geographic ● Aug. 17, 2023
As the National Hurricane Center and the World Meteorological Organization explain, affixing names makes things simpler for keeping track, beating the hay out of using something clunkier, such as, say, longitude-latitude coordinates.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 25, 2022
There are a few clunkier works here that detract from the whole, particularly digital prints on vinyl from the late 1990s and early aughts.
From New York Times ● Jul. 28, 2022
Even the dungeons, which are the clunkiest parts of the game, are inventive; they’re shopping malls rather than typical dungeons, and boast mundane objects like cellphones and TVs as enemies.
From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2021
"Pacific Rim," or what I remember of it, struck me as Del Toro's loudest, clunkiest and least essential picture, if also one of his most passionately felt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 22, 2018
That is admittedly the film’s clunkiest line, meant to describe the technological power of the Grid, but representative of its largely uninspired screenplay.
From The Verge ● Oct. 18, 2017
It’s the fifth season at Tennessee for Butch Jones, and his 33-23 record just took on its clunkiest clunker.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 1, 2017
Even then, student accounts were invariably on the university's oldest, clunkiest machine.
From Underground by Dreyfus, Suelette
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
