fecklessly


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Related to fecklessly: fecklessness

feck·less

 (fĕk′lĭs)
adj.
1. Careless and irresponsible: "political prestidigitation designed to distract public attention from his feckless flouting of basic ethical principles" (Doug Ireland).
2. Feeble or ineffective: "Pickering's life was routinely threatened, and one feckless attempt had already been made to kidnap or kill him" (Garry Wills).

[Scots feck, effect (alteration of effect) + -less.]

feck′less·ly adv.
feck′less·ness n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adv.1.fecklessly - with ineptitude; in an incompetent manner; "he performed his functions ineptly"
2.fecklessly - in a feckless manner; irresponsibly and incompetently
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
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References in periodicals archive ?
The film was 8A', the tale of a fecklessly promiscuous director abandoned by his muse.
His watch was a disgraceful time for the DOJ: He fecklessly transformed his powerful post into a virtual battering ram with which to browbeat the administration's critics while he engaged in the most sordid politicking, debasing the very notions of justice that he was sworn to uphold.
Trudeau would not have to wave his arms fecklessly and call for others to act in fulfilment of his virtue signalling.
I was walking my two big, daft and utterly soft Labrador dogs on the final part of their nightly poo patrol which took me out in the sticks (don't worry, I had my pockets stuffed with industrial amounts of poo bags - unlike those ignorant, selfish tramps who fecklessly let their dogs dump all over the place).
Indeed, his USAID cannot bring itself to use the word "cholera," but rather follows fecklessly the UN's World Health Organization and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs--referring to the cholera pandemic as cases of "acute watery diarrhea--this in deference to Khartoum's insistence that Sudan not be stigmatized by the presence of cholera.
Afraid to do "stupid stuff," it has done almost nothing, and what it has done--such as the Libya war, which saw the framing of the "lead-from-behind" Obama Doctrine--it has done fecklessly. Where America was once globally engaged, it is now globally absent.
Rather than fecklessly flexing his nation's overwhelming military power by launching totally counter-productive neo-imperial wars, he has largely extracted the US from the bottomless pits of foreign engagements.
(355) But at least as a first approximation, it is plausible to worry that such self-help will occur too frequently or vigorously in times of divided government, or too infrequently or fecklessly in times of unified government (when the same political party controls Congress and the presidency).
Perhaps the ECB, who have messed him about so fecklessly in recent months, had nally knocked the rhythm out of him.
Perhaps the ECB, who have messed him about so fecklessly in recent months, had finally knocked the rhythm out of him.