Word of the Day: unwieldy

The word unwieldy has appeared in 114 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on July 13 in “Her Qualification for Leading U.S. Soccer? She Never Stopped Winning” by Bruce Schoenfeld:

U.S. Soccer has 250 employees and a $170 million budget. It fields and funds teams that compete internationally. It hires coaches, negotiates with sponsors and flies players and support staff where they need to go. But it also oversees youth soccer, recreational soccer and even wheelchair and beach soccer — a total of more than 3.7 million registered players. Cone presides over all of them. The comparison isn’t perfect, but imagine the commissioner of Major League Baseball also running Little League — and beer-league softball.

The divergent interests make for an unwieldy organization, and frequently a dysfunctional one. Votes are apportioned to membership blocs and state organizations. “The structure of U.S. Soccer requires that each member advocate for their own interests,” Garber says, and some of these members have been advocating on the local and regional levels for decades. To them, those teams on television in red, white and blue could constitute a distraction and a drain on resources… At times, that tension grinds the organization to a standstill. “I don’t think if someone was putting together the federation today, they would set it up like this,” Cone says.

Daily Word Challenge

Can you correctly use the word unwieldy in a sentence?

Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.

If you want a better idea of how unwieldy can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.

Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.

The Word of the Day is provided by Vocabulary.com. Learn more and see usage examples across a range of subjects in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary. See every Word of the Day in this column.