is essayed a word

Nowhere is the conservatism of the Egyptians more clearly displayed than in the tenacity with which they clung to the old forms of the theology, such as -we have essayed to describe.

Early in the 2nd century AD., pagan Egyptians, or perhaps foreigners settled in Egypt, essayed , as yet unskilfully, to write the native language in Greek letters.

In 1611 Captain Hippon in the seventh separate voyage essayed a landing at Pulicat, but was driven off by the Dutch, who were already settled there, and sailed farther up the coast to Pettapoli, where he founded the first madras English settlement in the Bay of Bengal, which ments.

Although many amongst the Angles had, following his example, essayed to compose religious poetry, none of them, in Baeda's opinion, had approached the excellence of Cwdmon's songs.

It was apparently intended by the author as an analytical introduction to the constructive exposition of his system, which he presently essayed in the Ethics.

During the age of Anne various Augustan poets in whom the lyrical faculty was slight, from Congreve and Richard Duke down to Ambrose Philips and William Somerville, essayed the epistle with more or less success, and it was employed by Gay for several exercises in his elegant persiflage.

No imaginable strength of any single man would have sufficed to carry out a hundredth part of what Leonardo essayed .

He soon essayed journalism, first spending a year and a half in the service of a publisher of two Boston newspapers, the Manufacturer, an organ of the Clay protectionists, and the Philanthropist, devoted to humane reform.

On the 10th of December Gatacre essayed a night march and attack upon the enemy's position at Stormberg, and, misled by his guides in unknown ground, was himself surprised and forced to return with a loss of 719.

Hirado That, however, is an achievement of no small consequence, especially since it had never previously been essayed outside China.

He had mastered his manner and, as one may say, learned his trade, in the exercise of criticism and the reflective parts of literature, before he surrendered himself to that powerful creative impulse which had long been tempting him, so that when, in mature life, he essayed the portraiture of invented character he came to it unhampered by any imperfection of language.

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The word usage examples above have been gathered from various sources to reflect current and historical usage. They do not represent the opinions of YourDictionary.com.

Related Articles

Narrative essays narrate, argumentative essays argue, and expository essays … expose? Explain? (It’s a little of both). While these essays may use narrative, argumentative, and expository writing styles to make their points, they’re not the only types of essays to do so. In fact, there are 15 different types of essays — all of which narrate, argue, or explain something to their readers.

You might think of essays as boring assignments for explaining the themes in Huckleberry Finn or breaking down the characters in The Great Gatsby , but the essay is one of the most timeless forms in all of literature. It’s a genre that includes deep readings of texts, personal essays, and journalistic reports. Before you get to any of that, you need to figure out the basic parts of the essay.

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Navigating the woods: A nurse practitioner’s journey in rural healthcare, where challenges meet rewards

Melissa Mitchell, DNP ‘22 was working toward her DNP when she suffered the loss of a good friend. With the support of UW disability services, classmates, staff, and faculty she was able to persevere and graduate despite the challenges and grief. After graduation, she was unsure on what to do next. Diane Cashman, a clinical instructor, suggested she apply for fellowships. There were only two adult gerontology fellowships available in Washington state, leading her to the UW Premera Rural Nursing Health Initiative (RNHI) Fellowship .

“When I got the rural health nursing fellowship, I didn’t even know where Republic was!” laughed Mitchell. “But I found out quickly and it’s a great little town,” she added.

Mitchell joined the primary care clinic during the first year Republic participated in the rural health fellowship. She faced the reality of rural healthcare, where specialists were scarce and resources limited. Yet, she found purpose in serving a population of farmers, miners, and loggers, navigating challenges like access to care and limited resources.

“Practicing in rural areas, you need to have knowledge in multiple specialties because unlike in a larger well-resourced area you can just tap the shoulder of a colleague for a consult, in Republic we frequently have to figure it out on our own,” Mitchell said.

“The specialist rotations and nursing didactic courses, you will use it all in this fellowship. You don’t have to spend a career acquiring knowledge, because you will learn it all in this fellowship,” Mitchell said. “Being in this fellowship and working with this population has taught me to work and do more with less resources, but the rewards are immense,” she added.

Completing her fellowship, Melissa remains committed to her work in Republic, grateful for the collaborative team that supports her hybrid role. Balancing in-person and virtual patient care, she is grateful for the opportunity to extend herself daily, recognizing the vital role of nurse practitioners in providing primary care. She also encourages other new grads to take the rural fellowship path, serving as an ambassador at recruitment events and helping with recruitment for Republic’s next cohort of ARNP fellows.

This experience has taught her resilience, adaptability, and the immense rewards of serving rural communities, a journey she started thanks to encouragement of her clinical instructor and the opportunity from the UW School of Nursing’s Premera Rural Nursing Health Initiative (RNHI) fellowship.

-Kristine Wright

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Meaning of essaying in English

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• go after someone
• go all out idiom
• go down swinging/fighting idiom
• go for it idiom
• go for someone
• shoot the works idiom
• smarten (someone/something) up
• smarten up your act idiom
• square the circle idiom
• step on the gas idiom

Examples of essaying

In English, many past and present participles of verbs can be used as adjectives. Some of these examples may show the adjective use.

Word of the Day

play for time

to delay until you are ready

Like a bull in a china shop: talking about people who are clumsy

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How to Make ChatGPT Write Longer

Are you wondering, “How do I get ChatGPT to write longer?” Well, you’re not the only one.

The chatbot’s word limit is approximately 500 words per answer. Many students use this tool to generate essay samples, and they often need texts that are much longer than the word limit permits.

If you want to know how to overcome this issue, this article is for you. It will examine ways to make ChatGPT come up with longer texts and explain how to utilize AI tools as assistants. Ready? Let’s roll!

Disclaimer: We don’t encourage using ChatGPT to cheat or create academic papers. This article will discuss ethical ways of using AI.

• ✍️ Different Essays Length
• 🤔 How to Make ChatGPT Write Longer

🚀 Other Ways to Expand Your Texts

• 🙅‍♀️ 12 Mistakes to Avoid
• 🎁 Extending Your Essay Without AI

🔗 References

✍️ different essays length (by study level and genre).

The length of an academic paper depends on the topic’s complexity, the essay’s type, and the guidelines given by your instructor. Before you start working on a project, consider these factors to ensure it meets the requirements.

Here’s how an essay’s length differs depending on the academic level:

• Middle school papers are normally simple and short, between 300 to 1000 words long.
• High school-level essays range between 300 and 1000 words.
• Undergraduate program assignments often fall within the range of 1500 to 5000 words.
• Graduate program papers are often specialized and focused on research. Their word count ranges from 3000 to 10,000 words.

If we’re talking about essay genres, this is what you should keep in mind:

As you can see, a lot of essay types require the maximum amount of words ChatGPT can produce, and some of them are even longer than that. If you wish to generate a sample essay for inspiration, you’ll have to use hacks and tricks to make the chatbot write more. We’ll tell you all about them in the following sections.

🤔 How to Actually Make ChatGPT Write Longer

Now, let’s take a look at how to make ChatGPT write longer stories, code, essays, and other forms of content.

Writing a Prompt That Makes ChatGPT Write Longer

ChatGPT’s answers are only as good as your prompts. If you learn how to compose them properly, you will have no problem bypassing the chatbot’s word limit.

Check out the top 11 tried-and-true tips to get longer answers from ChatGPT below:

1. Make Your Prompt Specific and Logical

The scope of the bot’s response depends on how precise your prompt is. Try to use straightforward language and avoid fluff in your requests.

2. Request Examples

Examples add context and clarity to a text. Ask the algorithm to provide them, and it will add real-life instances and details, extending the response.

3. Provide Specific Word Count

One way to get ChatGPT to create more extended essays is to specify a word count. For instance, instead of typing “write an article about France,” you can say “write an 800-word article about the French Revolution.” Additional details will guide the tool and help it produce a longer response.

4. Break Down the Prompt

Another good strategy is to divide your instructions into several parts. This lets the algorithm to take more things into account.

5. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions invite for a deeper discussion. If you use them with ChatGPT, it’ll provide you with a detailed reply instead of a brief answer.

6. Set a Personality

You will get better and more detailed results if you get the chatbot to behave as a particular persona. For instance, if you work on an argumentative essay, you can ask the AI to act as an animal rights activist who argues that animal testing should be banned.

Upgrade Your Prompt with These Tricks

So, you’ve entered a well-written prompt, but you may still need to tweak the response to make it fit your requirements. Here’s what you can do as a follow-up to your query:

7. Regenerate a Response

Sometimes, to get a lengthier answer, all you need to do is click the “regenerate response” button. If the rewritten version still is too short, regenerate it again.

8. Ask to Elaborate

Another option is to throw in follow-up requests like “elaborate more on this.” The chatbot will give you a more precise answer than the previous one.

9. Ask to Explain & Continue

If ChatGPT hits its word limit and leaves the answer incomplete, use “continue” or “go on” in your next request to nudge the algorithm to keep generating.

10. Provide Extra Questions

You can incorporate follow-up questions to maintain engagement and encourage the AI model to expand on the responses.

11. Inquire a Comparison

This is a handy option when working on an analysis. When you ask ChatGPT to compare two things, the output will likely be comprehensive and detailed. Comparisons involve benefits, drawbacks, and other dimensions that will make the response longer and your study more comprehensive.

The following tools will help you improve your analysis even further:

• Rhetorical device finder will locate ethos, pathos, and logos in a piece of text.
• Quote explainer will assist in understanding famous sayings or literary quotations.
• Poem analyzer will be a great helper whenever you need to understand literary devices in poetry.

Now, you might be curious whether there are ways to extend a text without help from ChatGPT. The answer is—there definitely are! More and more tools with great features are being designed to make writing easier. Check out the options below to learn more.

IvyPanda Essay Extender

IvyPanda’s essay extender is specifically designed to help users reach the desired number of words. All you need to do is copy the text into the box, choose the word count you want, and press the “extend” button.

The tool can also be used to generate additional segments for an essay. For instance, if you struggle with the conclusion, the tool can create a sample paragraph based on your prompt.

Is IvyPanda’s extender better than ChatGPT? Well, there are plenty of aspects that make our tool a superior option:

• Unlike the chatbot, our tool generates its answers immediately and never glitches.
• Our generator is easy to apply: there’s no need to write long instructions and explain everything to get relevant responses.

Try it and see the benefits for yourself!

Question Generator from Text

IvyPands’s AI question generator from text is super handy whenever you need to extend your text. This tool creates a list of questions related to the text you paste into it. These questions will help you look at the subject from a different perspective and find new ideas with which to lengthen your essay.

Of course, you can also use ChatGPT for this task. However, the chatbot tends to get too general with the topic and may generate irrelevant questions.

In contrast, our question generator will develop just the right number of questions. You can then feed them into ChatGPT to get sample answers and use them to extend your essay.

Feel free to use other smart tools developed by IvyPanda to add parts to your essay:

• Essay hook generator will help you come up with a catchy opening paragraph.
• Research introduction maker will generate the background of your study.
• Free ChatGPT essay writer will provide you with additional samples.
• Abstract generator is a great tool for creating a summary of a research paper.

ChatGPT Playground

ChatGPT Playground is powered by Open AI API services. It lets users experiment with natural language models, parameters, and more without writing code.

Here are some of the tool’s main features:

• Temperature controls how random the text that ChatGPT generates is. Assigning it a higher value will make a response more creative while lowering it will result in plain answers.
• Top P is another way to control a text’s predictability. It determines how many words can be used to continue the phrase.
• The maximum length parameter specifies the highest number of output tokens (these are units of text generated by AI.)
• Stop sequences allow you to control the length of the content the algorithm generates implicitly.
• The frequency and presence penalty feature lets you control how often specific tokens appear in the text.

ChatGPT Playground is a fantastic solution, but it’s not free. For the first 3 months, users have $18 of free credits to test the tool. Once they run out of credits, they have to purchase a subscription.

AI Services & Plugins

Even though ChatGPT is widely considered the best free generative AI, there are numerous other tools and extensions from which you can benefit. They will assist you when working with the chatbot or help you generate new information for your project.

Some great ChatGPT alternatives are tools like Gemini , Bing , and Perplexity AI . And in case you want to improve your prompts and get more relevant responses, check out services such as AI Prompt Genius , WebChatGPT , Merlin , ChatOnAI , and PromptPerfect .

We will describe some of our favorite solutions below – be sure to check them out!

Gemini is an excellent alternative to ChatGPT if you want to make an essay longer. It has impressive features that simply can’t be overlooked:

• Multiple drafts . It gives more than one response to your input. Use any one you like to lengthen your text.
• Real-time data . It provides you with the latest information and real-time data instantly.
• Text input enriched with images . It can generate visuals and offer detailed descriptions of existing pictures or videos.
• Adjustable responses . It allows you to customize answers by marking them as creative or straightforward based on your preference.
• Advanced language model . Gemini uses LaMDA model, which aims to generate content that sounds very human-like. In contrast, ChatGPT uses GPT models, which focus on supplying information and tend to sound robotic.

Bing search engine has undergone impressive positive changes. Here are the features that make it so attractive:

• Bing Compose . The feature provides ready-made options to help you develop a high-quality prompt.
• Knowledge Cards 2.0 . The cards are displayed on the right side of your search. They provide additional information you can use for an essay, such as a timeline of related events.
• Stories . AI-generated stories combine text, images, video, and audio to deliver information on your search.
• AI-enhanced search . This feature offers additional information, widgets, and tools for every search.
• Cutting-edge chatbot . Bing’s very own chatbot Copilot uses OpenAI’s language model that can easily generate high-quality texts.
• Access to sources . Bing’s biggest advantage is that it provides sources it uses to generate answers. You can double-check them yourself and include them in an essay as references.

Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is a search engine similar to ChatGPT, but it has some unique features that make all the difference:

• The users can see where the information in the answer came from. It helps to evaluate the accuracy and allows you to quickly locate sources for your paper’s additional parts.
• The tool uses NLP and machine learning algorithms, ensuring relevant results.
• It has a related queries feature similar to Google’s “related searches.” It can help you find fresh ideas to incorporate into your essay and lengthen it.
• By default, Perplexity AI uses the GPT-3 model, but you can access GPT-4 if you upgrade to Pro.
• Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity has access to the entire internet and can retrieve latest data.

AI Prompt Genius

You can think of AI Prompt Genius as a cheat sheet for prompts to apply when working with AI. Here are its benefits:

• It gathers user-generated requests and sorts them into categories. This way, you can easily browse through topics such as business, academic writing, and others.
• Another great feature is that you can customize and save recently used prompts to reuse them later.
• Being able to access a variety of prompts will definitely improve your writing experience. So, if you need to write papers on a constant basis, this tool is a saver.

WebChatGPT is an extension that allows users to access ChatGPT through web browsers. It’s a convenient option if you want to use the chatbot’s capabilities while surfing the internet.

Check out its other benefits below:

• This tool is compatible with all popular search platforms. If you’re trying to extend an essay, you may find it helpful that the bot answers questions right beside the search results.
• The extension is also user-friendly when it comes to prompt features. You can access a library with one click and manage your own prompts.

ChatOnAI extension integrates ChatGPT right into your browsing window. It displays responses from the algorithm alongside search results. This feature lets you quickly gather ideas for additional content and run them through the chatbot, providing you with more content to extend your essay.

Another aspect that makes the tool super convenient is that it gives users access to top ChatGPT prompts for SEO, art, programming, marketing, and more. Templates at hand can significantly boost productivity and help you improve a paper.

PromptPerfect

PromptPerfect is a must-have tool for students, content creators, AI developers, or engineers.

The primary goal of PromptPerfect is to optimize prompts for language models like LLMs, LMs, and LMOps. Here are its main features and benefits:

• It allows users to automatically enhance prompts for various AI models.
• It supports SOTA AI models and lets users improve prompts for Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, GPT-3/3.5, GPT-4, DALL-E 2, and MidJourney.
• It lets users customize prompts – for example, to tailor them to yield longer responses.

Whether you’re a student or a writer, this Chrome extension is perfect if you’re looking to extend your generated text. With this tool, you’ll gain access to meticulously crafted prompt templates. You name a domain, and you get to it in just a click.

What makes AIPRM different from other extensions is the big prompt engineering community. This community has curated an extensive collection that covers various topics and is waiting to be explored.

🙅‍♀ How to NOT Get ChatGPT to Write Longer Essays – 12 Common Mistakes

Even though AI is getting smarter and may one day take over the world, it still remains a technology that carries out human requests and instructions. That’s also one of the reasons why it’s essential to create high-quality prompts to get relevant results when working with ChatGPT.

Whenever you work with the chatbot, make sure to avoid these widespread mistakes:

• Requesting factual data from ChatGPT. What to do instead: An AI tool is not an encyclopedia. Use it to brainstorm but rely on traditional research methods to get facts.
• Giving up too soon. What to do instead: If the results are not what you’ve envisioned, try rewording or simplifying your request.
• Giving insufficient context. What to do instead: The more context you can give to the AI, the better.
• Having too many instructions in a single prompt. What to do instead: Instead of putting everything in one request, split it into smaller ones.
• Omitting examples. What to do instead: Add specific references to enhance the accuracy of ChatGPT’s responses.
• Failing to guide the AI in a structured manner. What to do instead: Break down the writing process into stages.
• Mixing different topics or tasks in one chat. What to do instead: Since ChatGPT remembers the context throughout a conversation, it’s best to use different chats for each topic.
• Creating lengthy sessions that lead to irrelevant answers. What to do instead: When you see that a chat is getting too long, create a new one.
• Set for the first output and limit the potential. What to do instead: Generate several responses and select the best one.
• Confusing ChatGPT by being overly polite. What to do instead: ChatGPT is not a person, so use direct and unambiguous language instead of being mannerly.
• Making prompts too broad. What to do instead: Be specific to ensure accurate results.
• Never cleaning up the conversations. What to do instead: Remove old conversations you don’t plan to use and keep those you’ll refer to again.

🎁 How to Make Your Essay Longer Without AI: 7 Bonus Tips

So, we’ve talked about how to get ChatGPT to write more extended essays or use other AI tools to do the task. But what do you do if you need to lengthen a text without having access to any software?

Well, that’s not a problem at all! Check out this list of bonus tips that’ll help you create longer papers on your own:

• Be descriptive. When your essay is short on words, add details and elaborate on the topic.
• Draw a conclusion. Making a final point about your thesis can add several paragraphs to your piece.
• Minimize pronouns. Use specific names whenever possible to extend your paper, but avoid getting wordy.
• Support your ideas. Add relevant quotations, statistics, or real-life examples to lengthen your essay.
• Incorporate a concluding sentence in each paragraph. This will help you structure the paper as well as increase the number of words.
• Add transitional phrases. This will extend the text and make it flow better.
• Provide background information. Giving more details on the subject will help you increase the word count.

Whenever you work on a writing assignment, you can improve the outcome with the help of our study tools:

• Use our free plagiarism checker to ensure your writing is 100% unique.
• Run your text through an essay reader to ensure it has a good flow.
• Check the results with our AI detector for essays for free.

Now, you know all about generating longer texts and extending essays with or without AI. Here’s a quick recap:

• Write specific, detailed instructions.
• Request the algorithm to provide examples.
• Mention the desired word count in your query.
• Formulate the request as an open-ended question.
• Ask the chatbot to act as a specific personality.
• Break down the prompt into several smaller ones.
• Use follow-up requests to elaborate or continue writing.

And once your sample essay is ready, you can edit and improve it. Want to know how? Check out our guide on using ChatGPT to edit essays .

Remember to only use AI as assistance! Artificial intelligence can be a great helper for those who want to improve their work rather than generate entire papers. You can always use bots ethically and without breaking the school’s rules.

If you need help to make your essay reach the required word count, check out IvyPanda essay extender or other tools suggested in this article. Good luck with your future projects!

Recommended for you:

• How to Use ChatGPT for Research & Paper Writing: Prompts & Ideas
• Best AI Tools for Writing & Editing Essays
• How to Make AI-Generated Text Undetectable
• Four Tricks to Get Around ChatGPT’s Character Limit: Lifehacker
• Do ChatGPT Responses Have a Character or Word Limit?: MakeUseOf
• Getting Started with Prompts for Text-Based Generative AI Tools: Harvard University
• Making Your Paper Longer: George Mason University
• The 7 Types of Essays Every Student Needs to Know: Grammarly
• 5 Mistakes I Learned to Avoid When Working with ChatGPT: Entrepreneur
• How to Make ChatGPT Write Longer: Nerds Chalk
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Make it awkward!

Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script.

by Alexandra Plakias   + BIO

A man knows he should speak up about the sexist behaviour of his coworkers, but doesn’t, because they’re his friends and he doesn’t want to make it awkward. A tenured professor is bothered by her colleague’s flirtatious remarks, but says nothing, because it would be awkward to bring it up. A person runs into a recently bereaved coworker, and wonders whether to address their loss, but doesn’t know what to say, so doesn’t mention it.

We often joke about awkwardness; it’s a staple of contemporary comedy. The exclamation ‘Awkward!’ functions as a light-hearted deflection, defusing social tension. The reality is heavier. Awkwardness can be funny, but it can also be serious – it inhibits our ability to act even when we know we should, and it can shut down or pre-empt conversations about important topics like menstruation, money, menopause, mortality. The desire to avoid awkwardness acts as a powerful social inhibition, preventing people from speaking up, and motivating compliance with problematic social and moral norms. So, which is it, then? Is awkwardness a funny, quirky, everyday occurrence, something we should learn to live with and even embrace? Is it a serious social inhibitor with negative implications for moral decision-making and social change? Or – in truly awkward fashion – might it be both?

It often seems that awkwardness is a personal problem. Indeed, one of the most surprising things I discovered while writing my book Awkwardness (2024) was just how many people self-identify as awkward – and how attached people become to this label. Movies and popular culture reinforce the idea of awkward people, typically portrayed as socially inept misfits who stick out and don’t fit in with trends or social norms. This focus on individuals suggests that the best way to avoid awkwardness is through silence and conformity – to imitate others, blend in, and say nothing.

But this is only part of the story, and it gets awkwardness wrong in important ways. Yes, awkwardness is caused by a failure to conform to existing social norms. But this failure isn’t individual and, rather than think in terms of awkward people, we ought to think in terms of awkward situations. And yes, awkwardness can be painful, and unpleasant. But it’s not embarrassing, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Contrary to popular belief, our awkward moments aren’t cringeworthy. Rather than cringing inwardly about them, we ought to examine them more closely. Because once we realise the true nature of awkwardness, we can stop seeing it as an individual failure and start seeing it as an opportunity for social change. In short: we should take awkwardness less personally, and more seriously.

W hat is awkwardness? This turns out to be a tricky question. Most of us know it when we see it (or experience it), but definitions are hard to come by. Partly that’s because empirical work on awkwardness tends to treat it as a type or symptom of embarrassment. But this is a mistake. Embarrassment happens when an individual commits a social gaffe; its characteristic facial and bodily expressions involve a kind of apology. Embarrassment is thus a kind of social repair. But awkwardness is different: it’s not something an individual causes, and it’s not something an individual can resolve on their own; it’s a social rupture. The failure involved in embarrassment is a failure to conform to existing norms. Awkwardness is different: it happens when we don’t have a social script to conform to. In other words, embarrassment happens when we violate socially prescribed scripts; awkwardness happens when we lack prescriptions to guide us.

People often feel like awkwardness is about them – that they are awkward, or not. But awkwardness is a collective production. More accurately, it’s a collective failure. Awkwardness is a kind of normative negative space, offering what Adam Kotsko calls ‘insight through breakdown’. It arises when people find themselves suddenly without a social script to guide them through an interaction or an event. The term ‘script’ carries associations of playacting, and that’s not a bad way to understand awkwardness. But the lesson of awkwardness is that, in the dramedy of life, we’re not just the actors, we’re the writers.

Is this a date, or a work dinner? When two people land on different answers: awkward!

The sociologist Erving Goffman recognised that social interaction is a kind of performance in which we occupy various roles. When a performance fails, the actor feels discredited – to use Goffman’s term, he loses ‘face’. Maybe he’s trying to play a role his audience won’t grant him (for example, a failed attempt to flirt, or a rejected marriage proposal) or he loses his composure and botches the performance. We usually perform one self at a time: our roles and our audiences are ‘ segregated ’, thereby preventing the kind of uncomfortable clash that can happen when, say, you run into your boss while out on a date, or have to talk about sex with your parents. But sometimes this clash is unavoidable, and things can get awkward. A character on the TV show My So-Called Life (1994-5) summed up the problem: ‘What I, like, dread is when people who know you in completely different ways end up in the same area. And you have to develop this, like, combination you on the spot.’

The ‘on the spot’ nature of social performance marks a disanalogy with theatre: unlike an actor memorising a script, the social scripts that guide everyday interactions are highly flexible and shift quickly, without explicit negotiation or reflection. A single person will play many roles in the course of a day, or even a single afternoon. In this sense, our interactions are more like social improvisation than scripted drama. And like improvisation, successful social interaction depends on a cooperative partner willing to go along with the scene.

The social cues by which we navigate the world range from the explicit – a dress code; the ‘no presents’ written on a party invitation – to the nearly imperceptible. Even where cues are explicit, there are often unspoken understandings in place: what counts as ‘black tie’ or ‘festive cocktail attire’? Is the request ‘no presents’ really to be taken literally, or is it merely a polite pretence that everyone will ignore? Slight changes in a conversational partner’s speech pattern; a gaze held just a little too long; a centimetre of physical distance – any of these can shift people’s understanding of the interaction taking place. Is this a date, or a work dinner? Are they about to hug, kiss or shake hands? When two people land on different answers: awkward!

A wkwardness thrives in uncertainty. This explains the link between awkwardness and silence: since silence can mean so many things, it makes it difficult to coordinate on and curate an interpretation of a situation. For example, is no one speaking up because no one else has a problem with the sexist comment someone just made? Or is everyone as uncomfortable as I am, but equally unsure how to act? Sometimes silence is acquiescence; other times, it’s a form of protest. In contrast to an explicitly voiced objection, the silence on an issue can be hard to read.

Indeed, awkwardness is fundamentally a kind of social disorientation. There’s a certain comfort in being able to socially situate oneself. That’s not to say that hierarchies are comfortable or beneficial for everyone – far from it. But even as social rejection and downranking hurt, there is a different kind of discomfort that comes along with being socially lost and disoriented, and this is the discomfort associated with awkwardness. This disorientation is built into the very etymology of the term: it derives from the Middle English ‘awk’, meaning ‘wrong’ or ‘clumsy’, and the English suffix ‘-ward’, denoting direction or orientation – yielding ‘facing the wrong way’. But just like passing someone on a road, facing the right way depends on knowing how things are done around here.

Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are

Knowing social scripts is one thing; truly internalising them is another. From the Italian sprezzatura to the French nonchalance to the Chinese concept of wu wei , various traditions have admired the ability ‘to practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort’, as the 16th-century Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione put it. By contrast, contemporary putdowns like ‘try-hard’ or ‘pick me’ show that it’s not enough to know the social script; its execution should look effortless.

This is one way awkwardness functions to distinguish insiders and outsiders. It’s also why we should be wary of labelling others ‘awkward’. This gets awkwardness wrong – it’s not a personality or character trait, but something that emerges from social interactions. Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are. This might seem surprising: people often describe themselves (or others) as ‘awkward’, and it seems that some people do have more difficulty navigating social interactions than others. But there are practical as well as theoretical reasons for resisting the idea that awkwardness is an individual trait. The label ‘awkward’ is not as innocuous as it seems: it’s ambiguous, and it obscures more than it reveals.

For example, suppose I describe my colleague Rob as ‘awkward at parties’. This is ambiguous: am I saying that he feels awkward at parties, or that he makes me feel awkward at parties? Or both? This ambiguity creates a dangerous space for bias or even ostracism: I may mistake my own discomfort at Rob’s presence for a property of Rob – projecting my own feelings of awkwardness on to him in a sort of pathetic fallacy. For example, suppose Rob is in a wheelchair, and I have little experience interacting with wheelchair users. I might feel some uncertainty about how to approach the situation, worrying about saying ‘the wrong thing’ or not knowing whether to stand or kneel while speaking with him. Using the term ‘awkward’ risks placing responsibility for my discomfort on to Rob. Not only is this fundamentally unfair, but it means that I’m less likely to try to remedy my ignorance – what arrangement would make Rob most comfortable? And since I’ve now classified Rob (in my own mind, if not to others) as ‘awkward’, I may be less likely to seek out interactions with him in the future. As the feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes in The Promise of Happiness (2010): ‘To create awkwardness is to be read as being awkward. Maintaining public comfort requires that certain bodies “go along with it’’.’

W e can now begin to see how awkwardness becomes threatening, and how it can be weaponised, as Megan Garber has argued in The Atlantic . Because awkwardness is often aversive, those perceived as causing it risk ostracism. Changing social norms and rituals isn’t easy; adopting new ones can be costly. The person whose presence reveals the inadequacy of the status quo thus presents a threat. For example, in a department where the men routinely take clients to a strip club after dinner, or tell sexually explicit jokes in meetings, the presence of women colleagues might make things awkward, as they are forced to confront the clash between their workplace rituals and professional norms. One option would be to accept this conflict as of their own making, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. But too often, it’s the presence of the women that is blamed: now it’s awkward to tell those jokes, because there are women here. Blame falls on those perceived as different for ‘making’ things awkward. In many cases, though, it was awkward all along: that awkwardness was just being borne by someone else, as they tried to conform to others’ expectations.

Understood in these terms, awkwardness won’t necessarily become any less unpleasant to experience. But it’s worth paying more attention to when and where it arises, and be more willing to tackle it head-on. An unspoken expectation in many social interactions is that people already know how to navigate them. People avoid admitting social ignorance, and we are embarrassed by those who do, as if they’ve violated some unspoken social norm. But why should not knowing which pronoun, title or fork to use be any different from not knowing where the bathroom is, or what time the café opens? The reluctance to ask that social norms be made explicit reveals a deeper expectation: that social interaction should appear effortless. Awkwardness highlights the fact that our interactions are scripted. Its aversiveness shows the extent to which people prefer not to be reminded of this fact. And the lucky among us may not have to be.

We engage with physical infrastructure daily, often without thinking about it. That thoughtlessness is a privilege: when I walk into the lecture theatre and reach for the light switch, it’s more or less at arm’s reach, and I expect that to be the case in every room I walk into. Sometimes, the cord that pulls down the screen is a bit too high for me and I have to stand on a chair, and this is mildly annoying, embarrassing even. At that point I begin to feel irritated with the design of the room. I might wonder, who is it made for? Social scripts are like light switches and cords – we reach for them automatically, only really noticing their placement or existence when they’re not where we expect or need them to be. Of course, that’s not true for everyone. For many people, navigating the demands of daily life requires giving a good deal of thought to the placement of light switches, doorknobs and the like. For people who are neurodivergent, who struggle with reading facial cues, or who find themselves in unfamiliar social settings, the world is full of rooms with unpredictable, unreachable infrastructure. Awkwardness is a reminder that social infrastructure exists and that it is not equally accessible to everyone.

Because awkwardness is felt as a form of social discomfort, it doesn’t attach to everyone equally

The good news is that with effort and attention, social resources can be made more accessible. Awkwardness highlights where that work needs to happen. Understanding the social origins of awkwardness also helps reconceptualise it. Instead of thinking about it as a personal failure – a cringeworthy source of personal embarrassment, or shame – it can be recognised for what it is: the result of collective ignorance or absence.

And this is where the trope of the awkward misfit does a disservice. When awkwardness is understood as an individual failure to fit in, the response is supposed to be: do better; conform; learn the script. But that’s not always possible. Nor is it always desirable. In some cases, those norms are not serving everyone – or anyone. For example, many job interviews now eschew small talk and follow-up questions, following a scripted formula in which candidates are all asked the same questions with no follow-ups. This may feel awkward, especially for interviewers used to casual chit-chat. But that same chit-chat might unfairly skew the process by emphasising considerations of ‘fit’ and disadvantaging candidates who have less in common with interviewers. Professors may feel awkward asking students to share their pronouns, but this takes the burden of awkwardness off the students who might otherwise have had to jump in and correct people’s assumptions.

The upshot is that awkwardness isn’t something an individual should, or even can, fix on their own. To view awkwardness as shameful, or embarrassing, is therefore not just a philosophical mistake but a practical one: it is to miss out on an opportunity to repair the social infrastructure. Take the case of pronouns again: someone who finds it awkward to state their pronouns, but understands this awkwardness in terms of shame, might see the problem as stemming from a lack of courage or assertiveness, and feel bad about their failure to speak up. This puts the burden on them, going into new social or professional situations, to summon up the courage to change how they introduce themselves, which can make new interactions a source of stress or anxiety. If we understand awkwardness in terms of social scripts, things are different: the person might work with friends or colleagues to think about ways to build pronouns into introductions, or emails, or the structure of meetings.

But it’s important, too, to be mindful of who’s doing this work. Because awkwardness is felt as a form of social discomfort, it doesn’t attach to everyone equally. Social expectations of who does the work to make others feel comfortable – and correspondingly, who is held accountable when people feel uncomfortable – intersect with scripts around gender and social status. Women are often tasked with managing others’ moods and are expected to get along with others; this ‘emotional labour’ includes the work of repairing social interactions that become awkward. There’s a privilege in not worrying about others’ discomfort.

All of this might seem like a lot to put on a minor, everyday irritation. If we’re used to thinking of awkwardness as the kind of thing that crops up on bad dates, or a minor annoyance of office life, then what I’ve been saying so far might seem a bit overblown. Doesn’t everyone have awkward moments, and is it really such a big deal? The answer is that some of us have more awkward moments than others. And some awkward moments are a big deal: it matters that we have social scripts to talk about grief, or harassment, or race, because not talking about these topics erases an important part of people’s experiences. The silence associated with awkwardness can function to erase important parts of people’s experiences. But if we listen to it carefully, it can also tell us where more work is needed. The work of building our social infrastructure often goes unremarked upon. Awkwardness alerts us to the fact that our social norms are under construction. It’s an opportunity to examine the work that goes into our social lives, and why that work so often remains invisible.

In the drama of life, we don’t have to settle for being actors – we can be writers, too. Not everyone can afford to do this work. Not everyone’s contributions receive equal credit. But for those of us willing and able, awkward moments are an alert that our current social scripts are not working, and an opportunity to get to work writing better ones.

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