English

Adjective

gormy ‎(not comparable)

1. (US and Britain, dialects, chiefly Northern England and New England) Clumsy, awkward, ungainly, klutzy.
   • 1990, John Gould, There Goes Maine! (ISBN 0393245691), page 1187:

     And not always with finesse — the Lombard clanked and churned, and a man who is like a regular Lombard may be a bit gormy and sometimes apply brute strength when he might do the work easier if he'd stop and think a little.

   • 1990, Maurice Shadbolt, Monday's Warriors: A Novel (ISBN 0879239158), page 5:

     Kimball was never one to argue with a comrade's eyes and ears, not even those of a gormy jeezer like Connolly.

   • 2009, Stephen King, Under the Dome: A Novel (ISBN 1439148503), page 682:

     The Killian boy was carrying a chair, and making difficulties with it; he was what old-time Yankees would have called “a gormy lad.”

   • 2010, Pat Cunningham, A London Werewolf in America (ISBN 1606017713), page 32:

     Just the sort of place gormy Eugene would pick to hold a family get-together.

   • For usage examples of this term, see Citations:gormy.

Synonyms

• gorming

References

• John Gould, ‎Lillian Ross, Maine lingo: boiled owls, billdads & wazzats (1975), page 114
• Sidney Oldall Addy, A Supplement to the Sheffield Glossary, volume 22, issue 2 (1891), page 24

Etymology 2

From gorm/gaum ‎(“smear”) (see those entries for more).

Adjective

gormy ‎(not comparable)

1. (US and Britain, dialects, chiefly Southern US) Alternative form of gaumy (sticky, smeared with something sticky; grimy)
   • 1914, Edward Henry Peple, The prince chap, a comedy in three acts (1992 reprint ISBN 5877390015), page 50:

     The first thing you have got to do is to wash them gormy 'ands […]

   • 1916, Clarke Abigail, Edward Everett Hale at Harvard College, part IV, in The Unitarian Register, volume 95, page 583:

     "When I bought my tamarinds I eat one or two and then discovered that I had left my handkerchief at home, my hands were a little gormy, so I washed them in Frog Pond."

References

• Mildred Jordan Brooks, Southern stuff: down-home talk and bodacious lore (ISBN 0380764911), page 59: gormy, adj. Sticky or smeary. "Who wants to pick up a youngun all gormy with butter and 'lasses?"
• Bennett Wood Green, Word-book of Virginia Folk-speech (1912), page 202: Gormy, adj. Smeary; sticky.