Word.ws English Dictionary

dead-handed

dead-handed adjective: mindless, plodding, or passive; stultifying.

Adjective (1)

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

  1. Mindless, plodding, or passive; stultifying
    • No, it was stupid, dead-handed higher authority that made the army dead: absolutely fool-dead.1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC
    • In contrast, Washington was like a cold bath on a January morning; we were quickly made aware of the dead-handed grasp of the bureaucracy, the unwillingness of all but a few top leaders to consider old problems in fresh terms1971, Chester Bowles, Promises to keep: my years in public life, 1941-1969, page 377
  2. Having very little wrist or hand action.
    • Then simply hit a dead-handed chip, with the hands, wrists and arms all swinging together as if in a solid block.1984, George Peper, Golf's Supershots: How the Pros Played Them - How You Can Play Them, →ISBN
  3. Having limp or weak hands.
    • My mother laughs from her grave, such are my sewing skills, but among these dead-handed men my wielding of a needle is nothing short of a miracle.2012, Bill Gaston, The World, →ISBN

Adjective (2)

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

  1. Red-handed; having clear evidence of guilt.
    • Charlie blushed as if he had been caught in the act of dead-handed idiocy.2014, Emily Covington, Silver Follows, →ISBN

Adverb

dead-handed (not comparable)

  1. Red-handed, with clear evidence of guilt.
    • Your man is caught dead-handed. He has the gun in his hand, or the marijuana in the car, or the narcotics in his suitcase...1978, Sam Houston State University. Institute of Contemporary Corrections and the Behavioral Sciences. Interagency Workshop, Proceedings: Annual Interagency Workshop - Volume 6, page 83

Forms of dead-handed

comparativemore dead-handed
superlativemost dead-handed
alternative formdeadhanded

Origin of dead-handed

From dead + handed.

Possibly a confusion or blend of red-handed with dead to rights

Words formed from dead-handed

Questions about dead-handed

What does dead-handed mean?
Dead-handed means mindless, plodding, or passive; stultifying.
What part of speech is dead-handed?
Dead-handed can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near dead-handed in the dictionary

  1. dead-eye
  2. dead-eye Dick
  3. dead-eye Dicks
  4. dead-eyed
  5. dead-eyes
  6. dead-handed
  7. dead-handedness
  8. dead-hearted
  9. dead-heartedly
  10. dead-heartedness
  11. dead-in-shell

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead-handed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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