Word.ws English Dictionary

hand-me-down

hand-me-down noun: an item that is passed along for someone else to use.

Noun

hand-me-down (plural hand-me-downs)

  1. An item that is passed along for someone else to use.
    • Well, I'm willing, I'm able, I'm practically much alive / Well, I'm six-feet-tall, I ain't no hand-me-down1948, Roy Brown, “Mighty Mighty Man”
    • But these routes have always had hand-me-downs that aren't really designed for the job.2023 November 29, Paul Clifton, “West is best in the Highlands”, in RAIL, number 997, page 61
  2. (especially) A piece of clothing or other item which has been outgrown by an older sibling and passed down to a younger one.

Adjective

hand-me-down (not comparable)

  1. Used or second-hand, passed along by its prior user.
    • And what costume shall the poor girl wear / To all tomorrow's parties? / A hand-me-down dress from who knows where1967, Lou Reed, “All Tomorrow's Parties”, in The Velvet Underground & Nico, performed by The Velvet Underground
    • I don't want America's recovery and security to be sacrificed on an altar of discredited hand-me-down theories. And if you'll help us, they won't be.1983, 19th of March, Presidential Radio Address by Ronald Reagan

Verb

hand-me-down (third-person singular simple present hand-me-downs, present participle hand-me-downing, simple past and past participle hand-me-downed)

  1. (rare) To pass along to someone else.
    • “See into life, don’t just look at it” is her [Anne Baxter’s] creditable credo, hand-me-downed from her famous architect grandfather, the late Frank Lloyd Wright.1963, Cleveland Amory, Earl Blackwell, editors, Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables, Harper & Row, page 40
    • The carpet was a montage of fade and unfade indicating that when new it had been used in another office—probably Mr. Barlowe’s—and then hand-me-downed when the decorators had cut loose.1966, Mike Cohen, The Bright Young Man, J. B. Lippincott Company, page 27

hand-me-down meaning in Hindi and Malayalam

hand-me-down in Hindi

a piece of clothing that is passed along for a younger sibling to use
उतरन utran

hand-me-down in Malayalam

used, second-hand, nearly new
മറ്റൊരാളിൽനിന്നു കെെമാറി ലഭിച്ച, നേരത്തെ ഒരാൾ ഉപയോഗിച്ചതായ, ഉപയോഗിച്ചു പഴകിയ, പഴക്കംചെന്ന, തനിപ്പുത്തനല്ലാത്ത, ധൃതപൂർവ്വ

Examples of hand-me-down in a sentence

  • The old Pacers have vanished, replaced by a mix of hand-me-down fleets.2022 November 2, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 58:
  • The traditional family was poorly adapted to consumption: its raison d’être was rooted in sharing, hand-me-downing, and cooperative endeavor.1990, Jan E. Dizard, Howard Gadlin, The Minimal Family, The University of Massachusetts Press, →ISBN, page 41:
  • He could not change the past but he was determined that he would not follow in the grand family hand-me-downed legacy.2012, Lee Beck, From a Dark Place, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 442:
  • Instead I changed into a blue skirt and a white blouse with a scalloped collar, hand-me-downs from Marie Dowd that she had gotten hand-me-downed from cousins in Brooklyn who went to Catholic school.2017, Carol Zoref, Barren Island, New Issues Poetry & Prose, →ISBN, page 157:

Forms of hand-me-down

Noun
pluralhand-me-downs
alternative form (dated)hand-me-on
Verb
third-person singular presenthand-me-downs
present participlehand-me-downing
past participlehand-me-downed
pasthand-me-downed

Origin of hand-me-down

See hand down and me.

Questions about hand-me-down

What does hand-me-down mean?
Hand-me-down means an item that is passed along for someone else to use.
What is hand-me-down in Hindi?
Hand-me-down in Hindi is उतरन (utran). See Hand-me-down meaning in Hindi.
How do you use hand-me-down in a sentence?
The old Pacers have vanished, replaced by a mix of hand-me-down fleets.
What part of speech is hand-me-down?
Hand-me-down can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
What is the plural of hand-me-down?
The plural of hand-me-down is hand-me-downs.

Words near hand-me-down in the dictionary

  1. hand-lance
  2. hand-lances
  3. hand-made
  4. hand-madeness
  5. hand-mades
  6. hand-me-down
  7. hand-me-downs
  8. hand-me-on
  9. hand-me-ons
  10. hand-nail
  11. hand-nails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand-me-down (page history and authors); hand-me-down (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-hand-me-down.wav.

Cite this entry: “hand-me-down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hand-me-down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.