Word.ws English Dictionary

hand over fist

hand over fist adverb: quickly or in great quantity, especially in reference to earning money.

Adverb

hand over fist (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) Quickly or in great quantity, especially in reference to earning money.
    • to make money hand over fist
    • Are you coming over again to see me some day soon? I keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the realms of Hades: I saw that gentleman between the eyes, and fear him less after each visit.1880, Robert Louis Stevenson, “chapter 4”, in The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, volume I
    Synonyms:
    hand over hand

Examples of hand over fist in a sentence

  • Now, since cattle had risen and meat and all to such a price, he was making money hand over fist.1888, Rolf Boldrewood, “chapter 39”, in Robbery Under Arms:
  • In fact, he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly respected.1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster &...
  • Why, those Dalmatians are showing Pajaro apples on the South African market right now, and coining money out of it hand over fist.1913 October, Jack London, The Valley of the Moon, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC:
  • Now we are in the War and our business is booming, we are making money hand over fist.1917, Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion […] :

Synonyms of hand over fist

Origin of hand over fist

Related to earlier hand over hand, this phrase originally referred to a speedy method of climbing up or hauling on a rope.

Questions about hand over fist

What does hand over fist mean?
Hand over fist means quickly or in great quantity, especially in reference to earning money.
How do you use hand over fist in a sentence?
Now, since cattle had risen and meat and all to such a price, he was making money hand over fist.
What part of speech is hand over fist?
Hand over fist is an adverb.

Words near hand over fist in the dictionary

  1. hand on heart
  2. hand organ
  3. hand organs
  4. hand out
  5. hand over
  6. hand over fist
  7. hand over hand
  8. hand over head
  9. hand paper
  10. hand pay
  11. hand pays

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand over fist (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hand over fist.ogg.

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