Word.ws English Dictionary

hand-me-downs

hand-me-downs is the plural of hand-me-down.

Meaning of hand-me-down

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”
  2. (especially) A piece of clothing or other item which has been outgrown by an older sibling and passed down to a younger one.

See all 4 meanings of hand-me-down

Questions about hand-me-downs

What is hand-me-downs the plural of?
Hand-me-downs is the plural of hand-me-down.

Words near hand-me-downs in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand-me-downs (page history and authors); hand-me-down (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: “hand-me-downs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hand-me-downs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.