In Buddhist cosmology, Mara personifies unwholesome impulses, unskillfulness, the "death" of the spiritual life.

In 1829 she mentioned that "because of the unskillfulness of smiths for many years we have not smithed more than 400 shippounds a year, sometimes a little more."

The New York Times critic described the work as uneven; richly harmonious, but combining colour and beauty with effects "of an almost crass unskillfulness and ugliness".

Over and above the accidents to which they are exposed from the unskillfulness of the conductors of this paper money, they are liable to several others, from which no prudence or skill of those conductors can guard them.

There is no allegation, that the superintendent was not a fit and proper person to be employed by the defendants to perform the duties assigned to him, but only that he was chargeable with negligence and unskillfulness, on the particular occasion when the plaintiff was injured in the manner described.