Closehanded

adj, adv

adj, adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Covetous; penurious; stingy

    "Once he got to Main Street, the street lamps puddled pale gold circles directly beneath their poles, closehanded as a string of misers, but Mason avoided even the edges of their light."

  2. 2
    Secretive.

    "Ye need not be so closehanded of anything I send you: ye may communicate them to whom ye will, for I am little concerned if they be published under others' name or not."

  3. 3
    Involving close proximity. obsolete

    "...a closehanded battle, or tumult, in which the ditferent parties are confusedly mired together, and fight, as we say, pellmell."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Closely, directly.

    "As a reporter, I became aware of the problems whistleblowers face closehanded back when I was covering government and local government in Des Moines, Iowa."

Example

More examples

"Once he got to Main Street, the street lamps puddled pale gold circles directly beneath their poles, closehanded as a string of misers, but Mason avoided even the edges of their light."

Etymology

From close + handed.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.