Causing inconvenience.
Difficult to handle or manage especially because of shape; SYN. bunglesome, clumsy, ungainly.
Hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment; SYN. embarrassing, sticky, unenviable.
Lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance.
Not at ease socially; unsure and constrained in manner; SYN. ill at ease, uneasy.
Not elegant or graceful in expression; SYN. clumsy, cumbersome, inapt, inept, ill-chosen.
Made to feel uncomfortable because of shame or wounded pride; SYN. humiliated, mortified.
1. Aware of oneself as an individual or of one's own being and actions and thoughts.
2. Excessively and uncomfortably conscious of one's appearance or behavior.
1. Lacking a sense of security or affording no ease or reassurance
2. Marked by a lack of quiet; not conducive to rest; SYN. restless.
1. Malaise. Ressentir une gêne.
2. Obstacle. Constituer une gêne.
3. Dénuement. Vivre dans la gêne.
The carriage of someone whose movements and posture are ungainly or inelegant; SYN. clumsiness.
The inelegance of someone stiff and unrelaxed (as by embarrassment); SYN. clumsiness, gracelessness, stiffness.
The quality of an embarrassing situation; SYN. inconvenience, nuisance value.
Trouble in carrying or managing caused by bulk or shape; SYN. cumbersomeness, unwieldiness.
Unskillfulness resulting from a lack of training; SYN. clumsiness, ineptness, ineptitude, maladroitness, slowness.
ETYM Old Fren. desconfort, French déconfort. Related to Discomfort.
1. An uncomfortable feeling in some part of the body; SYN. soreness, irritation, tenderness.
2. The state of being tense and feeling pain; SYN. uncomfortableness.
ETYM French embarrassement.
1. Some event that causes someone to be embarrassed.
2. The shame one feels when one's inadequacy or guilt is made public.
3. The state of being embarrassed (usually by some financial inadequacy).
ETYM Latin inconvenientia inconsistency: cf. Old Fren. inconvenience.
1. An inconvenient discomfort; SYN. incommodiousness.
2. The quality of not being useful or convenient.
Unit of inherited material, encoded by a strand of DNA and transcribed by RNA. In higher organisms, genes are located on the chromosomes. A gene consistently affects a particular character in an individual —for example, the gene for eye color. Also termed a Mendelian gene, after Austrian biologist Gregor Mendel, it occurs at a particular point, or locus, on a particular chromosome and may have several variants, or alleles, each specifying a particular form of that character—for example, the alleles for blue or brown eyes. Some alleles show dominance. These mask the effect of other alleles known as recessive.
In the 1940s, it was established that a gene could be identified with a particular length of DNA, which coded for a complete protein molecule, leading to the “one gene, one enzyme” principle. Later it was realized that proteins can be made up of several polypeptide chains, each with a separate gene, so this principle was modified to “one gene, one polypeptide”. However, the fundamental idea remains the same, that genes produce their visible effects simply by coding for proteins; they control the structure of those proteins via the genetic code, as well as the amounts produced and the timing of production.
In modern genetics, the gene is identified either with the cistron (a set of codons that determines a complete polypeptide) or with the unit of selection (a Mendelian gene that determines a particular character in the organism on which natural selection can act). Genes undergo mutation and recombination to produce the variation on which natural selection operates.
The term “gene” was coined 1909 by the Danish geneticist Wilhelm Johannsen (1857–1927).
A self-replicating protein molecule that occupies a fixed place on a chromosome; a unit of heredity.