Strong-handed

adj, adv

adj, adv ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having hands that are strong; by extension, Strong, mighty

    "The paths were kept clean; the bits of board before the door were well swept, the children looked tidy, and the old grandmother, of whose fat, happy face, and clean-starched cap, I have yet a faint vision, seemed the belle ideal of a bold-hearted, strong-handed western woman, sinking into the well-earned repose of ripened years."

  2. 2
    Forceful or vigorous.

    "He not only punctuated his remarks with strong-handed gestures, coy smiles, dancing eyebrows, and guffaws, he seemed constantly to be folding or flinging about the loose ends of his maroon habit, seizing the limbs of panelists sitting on stage with him, waving to friends in the audience, and flipping through the program while his translator dispatched a lengthy remark."

  3. 3
    Resolute; unwavering and dauntless.

    "Resolute, strong-handed fellows they were, with Ethan Allen at their head; a native of Connecticut, but brought up among the Green Mountains."

  4. 4
    Firm; strict and harshly enforced.

    "The justification for this was that individual human beings were either fragile, fearful and slaves to themselves, or beastish and prone to the war of all against all (Bauman 2000: 20), which meant that humanity needed expert social architects to provide the perfect models of the common life and also a strong-handed political agency to make these models work."

  5. 5
    Having many workers. obsolete

    "He took us on board purely out of a national feeling, for his ship was strong-handed without us, having thirty-two souls, all told, when he received us five."

Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    Wealthy. US, obsolete

    "If he be strong-handed, (has property,) he has the trees felled, about one foot from the earth, dragged into heaps, and made into an immense bonfire."

  2. 7
    Strongly lateralized.

    "Interestingly, the study of hadedness and brain laterality is moving toward an approach where individuals are evaluated according to the degree they are “strong-handed” or “mixed-handed” rather than being assigned to the fixed categories left-handed, right-handed, or ambidextrous."

Adverb
  1. 1
    With the gun held in hands braced against each other.

    "As an example, firing strong-handed from the Weaver stance, we have our left foot forward and the right foot to the rear."

  2. 2
    In a strong-handed manner.

    "Six men and two women would make but a poor job, in defending such a place as this, should the enemy invade us, as no doubt, Frenchman-like, they would take very good care to come strong-handed.""

Example

More examples

"The paths were kept clean; the bits of board before the door were well swept, the children looked tidy, and the old grandmother, of whose fat, happy face, and clean-starched cap, I have yet a faint vision, seemed the belle ideal of a bold-hearted, strong-handed western woman, sinking into the well-earned repose of ripened years."

Etymology

* strong + handed

Related phrases

More for "strong-handed"

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