English

Adjective

free-handed ‎(comparative more free-handed, superlative most free-handed)

1. Alternative form of freehanded (generous).
   • 1844, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Luck of Barry Lyndon:

     No man has been at greater straits than I, and has borne more pinching poverty and hardship; but nobody can say of me that, if I had a guinea, I was not free-handed with it, and did not spend it as well as a lord could do.

   • 2015, Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, ISBN 1623958970:

     This tendency of his to be liberal and profuse he had acquired from having been a soldier in his youth, for the soldier's life is a school in which the niggard becomes free-handed and the free-handed prodigal

2. Alternative form of freehanded (unassisted).
   • 2009, Giles R. Scuderi & ‎Alfred J. Tria, Minimally Invasive Surgery in Orthopedics, ISBN 0387766081, page 341:

     This chapter discusses the role of patellofemoral arthroplasty for isolated patellofemoral arthritis, describes a free-handed, uninstrumented MIS surgical technique, and reviews the results of the procedure (independent of surgical approach).

3. Alternative form of freehanded (unconstrained).
   • 2009, Kenneth C. Wenzer & ‎Ross B. Emmett, Henry George, the Transatlantic Irish, and Their Times, ISBN 1848556594, page ii:

     Meanwhile, and contradictorily to this contraction of currency, the collapse of National Bank that had earlier put limits on the free-handed lending policies of state banks allowed these to flood much of the country with cheap paper money.

   • 2002, Henry Schofield, Essays on Constitutional Law and Equity and Other Subjects, ISBN 1584772239, page 37:

     But the opinion of Gray, J., in that case can hardly bear the interpretation that State Courts are free to play whatever tricks they please with the State law. ... A retrograde movement to free-handed State judicial iconoclasm is impossible.

4. Alternative form of freehanded (having empty hands).
   • 1990, Lakșmi, Ripples in the River, ISBN 8172010451, page 22:

     A short way ahead Kaveri was startled to see a woman carrying a child in her arms as well as a load on her head while the man twirled his moustache and walked beside her, free-handed.

5. (finance) Alternative form of freehanded (transferable to other assets).
   • 1943, Garrard Glenn, Mortgages, deeds of trust, and other security devices as to land, Volume 3, page 409:

     This distinction is all the more important when we are in a jurisdiction where the free-handed mortgage of a stock in trade is unlawful.

Adverb

free-handed ‎(comparative more free-handed, superlative most free-handed)

1. Alternative form of freehanded (generously).
   • 2015, Brander Matthews, Poems of American Patriotism, ISBN 1681055554:

     And all men that have loved right more than ease, And honor above honors; all who gave Free-handed of their best for other men, And thought their giving taking...

2. Alternative form of freehanded (unassisted).
   • 1951, Thomas Mann, The Holy Sinner, ISBN 0520076710, page 30:

     The burghers go in velvets and furs, but they have not learned to leap free-handed to horse nor to aim with the lance at the four nailes of the shield, nor yet to ride a buhurd, therefore they need a duke who protects them, and that am I.

   • 2004, Steve Jordan & Judy Ostrow, Painting Kitchens, ISBN 1610594150, page 46:

     You can cut in around stained trim or into another color free-handed like a painter or with painter's tape.

3. Alternative form of freehanded (in an unconstrained manner).
   • 2007, Louis A. Pérez, Cuba Between Empires, 1878-1902, ISBN 0822971976, page 183:

     To wit: If the United States is to intervene for the pacification of Cuba it should do so free-handed;

Verb

free-handed

1. simple past tense and past participle of free-hand