Word.ws English Dictionary

hard-handed

hard-handed is the alternative spelling of hardhanded.

Meaning of hardhanded

Adjective

hardhanded (comparative more hardhanded, superlative most hardhanded)

  1. Forceful, excessive, draconian, or abusive.
    • 'Tis the cruel gripe, / That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts, / The hope of better things, the chance to win, / The wiſh to ſhine, the thirſt to be amus'd, / That at the found of Winter's hoary wing, / Unpeople all our counties, of ſuch herds, / Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, looſe...1785, William Cowper, “The Garden”, in The Task, a Poem, in Six Books. By William Cowper … To which are Added, by the Same Author, An Epistle to Joseph Hill, Esq. Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools...
  2. Working-class; having hands hardened from labor.
    • To deliver out of that Egyptian bondage to Wretchedness, and Ignorance, and Sin, the hardhanded millions, of whom this hardhanded, earnest witness, and writer, is here representative.1864, Thomas Carlyle, Critical and miscellaneous essays, page 374

Forms of hard-handed

comparativemore hard-handed
superlativemost hard-handed

Questions about hard-handed

What is hard-handed the alternative spelling of?
Hard-handed is the alternative spelling of hardhanded.

Words near hard-handed in the dictionary

  1. hard-fisted
  2. hard-float
  3. hard-fought
  4. hard-g
  5. hard-grained
  6. hard-handed
  7. hard-handedly
  8. hard-handedness
  9. hard-headed
  10. hard-hearted
  11. hard-heartedly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hard-handed (page history and authors); hardhanded (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: “hard-handed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hard-handed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.