Double-handedly

adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    Using two people.

    "Dinghies are designed to be sailed single-handedly or double-handedly, but some larger cruising dinghies may have room for four or more people on board."

  2. 2
    Using both hands at the same time.

    "Working double-handedly also conserves your hands in large kneading strokes, for example when you are working on the adductors on the inside of the thigh."

  3. 3
    By means of two approaches or agents

    "I said I was writing my memoirs, a choppy musical dedicated to counterpoint, without the axes of time and place, collapsing in upon itself because the notes will inevitably run out, returning, elaborating, crisscrossing, double-handedly creating variations upon a theme."

  4. 4
    Duplicitously or hypocritically.

    "NATO works double-handedly against Albanians and Serbs."

Synonyms

All synonyms
doubly

Example

More examples

"Dinghies are designed to be sailed single-handedly or double-handedly, but some larger cruising dinghies may have room for four or more people on board."

Etymology

From double-handed + -ly.

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