English

Alternative forms

• close-handed

Adjective

closehanded ‎(comparative more closehanded, superlative most closehanded)

1. Covetous; penurious; stingy
   • 2015, Fran Stewart, chapter 8, in A Wee Murder in My Shop, ISBN 1101639520:

     Once he got to Main Street, the street lamps puddled pale gold circles directly beneath their poles, closehanded as a string of misers, but Mason avoided even the edges of their light.

   • 2013, James A. Froude, The Essential James A. Froude Collection, ISBN 1456613782:

     The most famous of the roods was that of Boxley in Kent, which used to smile and bow, or frown and shake its head, as its worshippers were generous or closehanded.

   • 1827, ‎Richard Alfred Davenport, New elegant extracts; a selection from the most eminent prose and epistolary writers Volume 2, page 36:

     In his buildings he was magnificent ; in his reward closehanded : so that his liberality extended rather to what regarded himself, and his own memory, than to the rewarding of merit.

2. Secretive.
   • 2014, J.L. Berggren, ‎Jonathan M. Borwein, & ‎Peter Borwein, Pi: A Source Book, ISBN 1475742177, page 90:

     Ye need not be so closehanded of anything I send you: ye may communicate them to whom ye will, for I am little concerned if they be published under others' name or not.

   • 1997, Thomas Cripps, Hollywood's High Noon: Moviemaking and Society Before Television, ISBN 0801853168, page 236:

     Formerly a tight, closehanded group of archives in fear of studio snoops in search of misappropriated property in the archives' collections, they have since blossomed into relatively open "cinematheques" complete with Rene Beauclair's The International Directory of Film and TV Documentation Centers (1988).

3. (obsolete) Involving close proximity.
   • 1845, Edward Smedley, ‎Hugh James Rose, & ‎Henry John Rose, Encyclopædia Metropolitana; Or, Universal Dictionary of Knowledge, Volume 1, page 115:

     ...a closehanded battle, or tumult, in which the ditferent parties are confusedly mired together, and fight, as we say, pellmell.

Adverb

closehanded ‎(comparative more closehanded, superlative most closehanded)

1. Closely, directly.
   • 1976, United States Congress: Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, Federal Employee Disclosure Act of 1975, S. 1210, page 21:

     As a reporter, I became aware of the problems whistleblowers face closehanded back when I was covering government and local government in Des Moines, Iowa.

Related terms

• closehandedness