Word.ws English Dictionary

hardhandedness

hardhandedness noun: harshness, strictness.

Noun

hardhandedness (uncountable)

  1. Harshness, strictness.
    • Well-to-do citizens, both Reformed and Catholic, also backed down and withdrew their demands, forming a united front to suppress the revolt in the cities, either through hardhandedness or appeasement.2004, Albert Blankert, Selected writings on Dutch painting: Rembrandt, Van Beke, Vermeer, and Others, page 45
  2. The embodiment of working-class virtue; hard-working practicality.
    • Coming in among us by hundreds and thousands, as they now are and for years have been, their gentler and fiercer passions, like meadow rivulets and mountain torrents, mixing in with and modifying our own, and their art, science and literature, their hardhandedness and willingheartedness, and their...1850, William Davis Gallagher, Facts and Conditions of Progress in the North-west, page 28

Forms of hardhandedness

alternative formhard-handedness

Origin of hardhandedness

From hardhanded + -ness.

Questions about hardhandedness

What does hardhandedness mean?
Hardhandedness means harshness, strictness.
What part of speech is hardhandedness?
Hardhandedness is a noun.

Words near hardhandedness in the dictionary

  1. hardhack
  2. hardhacks
  3. Hardham
  4. hardhanded
  5. hardhandedly
  6. hardhandedness
  7. hardhat
  8. hardhats
  9. hardhead
  10. hardheaded
  11. hardheadedly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hardhandedness (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: “hardhandedness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hardhandedness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.