Word.ws English Dictionary

double-handed

double-handed adjective: involving both hands. Also the simple past and past participle of double-hand.

Adjective

double-handed (not comparable)

  1. Involving both hands.
    • With this double-handed frontal horizontal grip the child is held in secure prone position so that its legs can move freely.2002, Lilli Ahrendt, Mathilde Kohl, Baby Swimming, →ISBN, page 116
  2. Designed to be used with two hands.
    • Usually 2–3.5 metres in length, double-handed spinning rods are ideal for tackling slightly larger fish, including tailor, salmon (hahawai), trevally, flathead, snapper, barramundi, and Murray cod.2010, Steve Starling, Fishing For Dummies, →ISBN
  3. Involving two people.
    • The double-handed conversation had started to resemble a vaudeville act.2010, Malcolm Pryce, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, →ISBN
  4. Serving two purposes or involving two approaches.
    • A “double-handed” strategy is called for, where the authorities show a readiness to intervene in the short run to support the economy should it flag again, while at the same time providing economic agents with a sense of long-term direction and governance to re-establish confidence.2003 June, “Economic Outlook”, in OECD Economic Outlook, number 1, number 73, →ISBN
    • Duchamp played a double-handed game, on one hand a public strategy on the other a clandestine commitment.2010, Gary Willis, The Key Issues Concerning Contemporary Art, →ISBN
  5. deceitful; deceptive
    • Ibrahim, who entertains suspicions of this double-handed policy, compromises the Prince by every means in his power.1835, Alphonse de Lamartine, A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
    • While the idea of a “special post” reflects, as we have seen earlier, the double-handed way in which female professional labor was capitalized upon by the state, it also shows how the colonial bureaucracy used the vector of work to normalize a certain congruity between gender and citizenship.2010, Sukanya Banerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens, →ISBN, page 131

Adverb

double-handed (not comparable)

  1. With two hands.
    • Holding his stick double-handed, the man swung it around mid-height towards Henry's already bruised rib cage.2015, Nick Oldham, Edge: A Henry Christie thriller, →ISBN

Also used as

double-handed is also the simple past and past participle of double-hand.

Forms of double-handed

alternative formdoublehanded

Words formed from double-handed

Questions about double-handed

What does double-handed mean?
Double-handed means involving both hands.
What part of speech is double-handed?
Double-handed can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near double-handed in the dictionary

  1. double-glazed
  2. double-glazes
  3. double-glazing
  4. double-glazings
  5. double-hand
  6. double-handed
  7. double-handedly
  8. double-handedness
  9. double-handing
  10. double-handling
  11. double-hands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: double-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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Cite this entry: “double-handed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/double-handed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.