cack-handed: [19] Cack comes from a 15thcentury dialect verb meaning ‘defecate’, which probably came from Middle Dutch cacken. It goes back via Latin cacāre to an ultimate Indo- European base *kak-, from which a lot of other Indo-European languages get words connected with ‘excrement’. The connection with cackhanded is usually explained as being that clumsy people make a mess; on this view ‘left-handed’, which cack-handed also means, is a secondary sense derived from ‘clumsy’. It may be nearer the mark to place ‘left-handed’ first, however, bearing in mind the traditional role of the left hand in many cultures for wiping the anus.
