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.