Red-handedly

adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    Red-handed; with clear evidence of guilt.

    "And even though a moment earlier he had felt guilty not to have taken Dave's anguish more to heart, Claytor found himself annoyed at being caught red-handedly dogless ."

  2. 2
    In a bloody and violent manner.

    "A SATU fellow, trawled redhandedly following an exchange of gunfire, was ordered executed before us upon his confession of how the SATU had planned to destroy human being in the Grey stone Compound."

Example

More examples

"And even though a moment earlier he had felt guilty not to have taken Dave's anguish more to heart, Claytor found himself annoyed at being caught red-handedly dogless ."

Etymology

From red-handed + -ly.

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