Word.ws English Dictionary

fifthhand

fifthhand adjective: having been relayed by four intermediate sources.

Adjective

fifthhand (not comparable)

  1. Having been relayed by four intermediate sources.
  2. Having had four previous owners.
    • It was secondhand‹make that fourth- or fifthhand. This was from an era before any kind of copyright, when librettists were almost expected to steal from other works.2002 January 3, Richard Traubner, “Mozart's Singspiel”, in Playbill

Origin of fifthhand

From fifth + hand.

Questions about fifthhand

What does fifthhand mean?
Fifthhand means having been relayed by four intermediate sources.
What part of speech is fifthhand?
Fifthhand is an adjective.

Words near fifthhand in the dictionary

  1. Fifth World
  2. fifth-day fits
  3. fifth-rate
  4. fifth-rates
  5. fifthed
  6. fifthhand
  7. fifthing
  8. fifthly
  9. fifthness
  10. fifths
  11. fiftie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fifthhand (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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