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Definition 2024


swifthanded

swifthanded

See also: swift-handed

English

Adjective

swifthanded (comparative more swifthanded, superlative most swifthanded)

  1. Alternative form of swift-handed
    • 1974, Viscount Arthur Hamilton Lee Lee & ‎Alan Clark, A good innings: the private papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham, page 345:
      Meanwhile, in default of other and more useful occupation I was pressing on seriously with the production of this memoir, guided and inspired by Ruth's diaries, and supported by the ministrations of 'Hardie', our loyal, swifthanded, and unruffle-able secretary.
    • 1974, Women of Korea - Issues 61-72, page 19:
      Simple people imagined his swifthanded correctness of mustering, dispersing and moving his units only through a story about the "magic of shortening distance" found in a legend
    • 1997, Thomas Carlyle, ‎Clyde de L. Ryals, & ‎Jane Welsh Carlyle, The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle: 1850:
      His maid is the queerest little body you ever saw; Recca ("Dumpy" Recca he calls her), a little black-eyed loud-voiced swifthanded Fenella of a creature, hardly above 3 1/2 feet high, for she has a terrible crook in her back;
    • 2015, Robert K. DeArment, Deadly Dozen: Twelve Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West - Volume 1, ISBN 0806185120:
      Bill Standifer's spreading reputation asa straight-shooting, swifthanded gunfighter sometimes was enough to defuse potentially violent confrontations, as in the summer of 1889 when IOA Ranch manager Rollie Burns came to the sheriff with a problem.