English

Alternative forms

• whitehanded

Adjective

white-handed

1. Having hands that are white.
   • 2000, Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology, ISBN 0674744179:

     As exemplified by the white-handed gibbon, the commonest and best-studied member of the group, they show a remarkable convergence in social behavior to the dusky titi and other monogamous New World primates.

2. Characterized by delicacy and a pale-skinned beauty.
   • 1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days:

     He was one of the miserable little pretty white-handed, curly-headed boys, petted and pampered by some of the big fellows, who wrote their verses for them, taught them to drink and use bad language, and did all they could to spoil them for everything in this world and the next.

   • 1871, The Dublin University Magazine - Volume 77, page 46:

     The lady understands best what is required to make others like herself, and it is required to make all girls into ladies; not, perhaps, into delicate white-handed beauties, but to give their souls that gentleness, and their minds that beauty, which are better than the whiteness of lilies or the morning blush of the summer rose.

3. Aristocratic, with connotations of effeminacy and foppishness.
   • 1859, George Eliot, Adam Bede:

     If you want to know more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman whom you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a fellow-countryman—well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his man: I will not be so much a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed coat, and low top-boots.

   • 1862, S. Lucas, Once a Week: Volume 6:

     A white-handed, useless young aristocrat, by your account, married to a preacher's daughter, without capital, or useful knowledge, or any handicraft to live by.

   • 1907, Evelyn Raymond, Dorothy at Skyrie, ISBN 1465561846:

     Also by that time, he doubtless thinks, a white-handed aristocrat like Herbert will have tired of the affair and betaken himself back to the Towers where he belongs.

4. From the professional classes; With hands that are not brown from manual labor.
   • 1878, David Blair, The History of Australasia, page 470:

     Among the successful there were scarcely any of the head-working, white-handed class, but a number of hard-working, frugal men, who, landing without a penny,...

   • 1898, Knights of Labor, Official Hand-book for the Information of Organizers of Knights of Labor & All Others who are Interested in Securing Industrial Freedom, page 62:

     His battle is for bread, while white-handed theorists, who never placed a palm to an implement of labor, gather shrewdly into well-filled safes all the products of honest .

   • 1909, H. G. Wells, Tono Bungay:

     It seemed to me that the most modern owner conceivable in this serene fine place was some bearded scholarly man in a black cassock, gentle-voiced and white-handed, or some very soft-robed, grey gentlewoman.

5. Benevolent or virtuous.
   • 1634, John Milton, Comus:

     O welcome, pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!

   • 1869, Augusta Jane Evans, Vashti: Or, "Until Death Do Us Part", page 354:

     Mrs. Gerome, defiant pride bars your heart from the white-handed peace that even now seeks entrance.

   • 1923, Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet:

     The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.