ungainly
/ʌnˈɡeɪnli/adjective
Awkward or clumsy in movement or appearance
From O.English un- (Not) + O.Norse, via Middle English gein / gain (Helpful).
Lineage
un-
gein / gain
The story
Picture someone trying to move gracefully through a crowded medieval hall and knocking into every bench: that is the sort of person the word’s early sense could describe. In Middle English, ungein meant “inconvenient” or “troublesome,” joining un- (“not”) to gein, a word for what was helpful or suitable. The gein part reaches back to Old Norse gegn, meaning “straight” or “direct”—a surprising cousin to again and against, whose histories also involve ideas of return or opposition. By the 1610s, ungainly was being used for the awkward and clumsy, while gainly (“graceful”) was later formed as a back-formation from it. So the “graceful” word is the newcomer: ungainly got there first.