What does "ironhanded" mean?

Alternative form of iron-handed.

What is a synonym for "ironhanded"?

Common synonyms include: dour, firm, fundamentalist, hard, hidebound, inexorable.

adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Adjective

1
Alternative form of iron-handed. alt-of, alternative
"Nationalist upheaval consumed Yugoslavia after the death of Tito, the ironhanded unifier."

"Nationalist upheaval consumed Yugoslavia after the death of Tito, the ironhanded unifier."

From iron + handed, from the idea of having an iron hand.

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