Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use backhanded in a sentence

21 example sentences · adjective, adverb

Backhanded means with the back of the hand. Example: “During the boxing match, I accidentally backhanded my opponent.”

Examples of backhanded by meaning

adjectiveWith the back of the hand.

  • The trader roars like an animal whose paw has been caught in a trap, but he hauls back his other arm and lands a backhanded blow to the side of her head that knocks her sideways onto the babushki bench.2010, Byrna Barclay, Jack Hodgins, The Forest Horses: A Novel, →ISBN, page 178

adjectiveInvolving a backward flip of the hand.

  • Some casters can do a cross-body or backhanded cast quite effectively.2014, Rick Kustich, Advanced Fly Fishing for Great Lakes Steelhead, →ISBN, page 42
  • This is the same type of motion used for the backhanded change-up.2009, Winning Softball for Girls, Facts On File, Incorporated, →ISBN, page 139

adjectiveInsincere, sarcastic, ironic, or self-contradictory.

  • Don't mistake this for even a backhanded compliment; that at least takes a wry sense of imagination.2007, Mark Wiskup, The It Factor: Be the One People Like, Listen To, and Remember, →ISBN, page 116
  • He sometimes paid Descartes the backhanded compliment—backhanded because it detracted from the Frenchman's much-vaunted originality— of suggesting that his major achievement was to restore the study of Plato.2006, Stuart Brown, N. J. Fox, Historical Dictionary of Leibniz's Philosophy, →ISBN, page 202
  • But on this particular occasion I was fired on as an individual by an entire battery of enemy artillery, and for some odd and backhanded reason I felt important.2008, R. Richard Kingsbury, The Eighteen-Year-Old Replacement: Facing Combat in Patton's Third Army, →ISBN, page 104

adjectiveIndirect.

  • Only in grade 5 is he mentioned and in this backhanded way: "George Darwin, son of the famous English scientist, Charles Darwin." . . .1988, Thomas F. Glick, The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, →ISBN, page 479
  • ClickStart could be seen as a backhanded way of admitting that, to date, the Internet had done exceedingly well by white people as compared to black;2002, Sara Miles, How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley, →ISBN, page 233

adjectiveBackwards, turned around.

  • No one ever believed that Leif meant any harm, but all the luck he brought was backhanded.2000, Margaret Elphinstone, The Sea Road, →ISBN, page 98
  • In America today, most Wire Eye Splices are made backhanded.1944, Clifford Warren Ashley, The Ashley Book of Knots, page 310

adjectiveInclining to the left.

  • In this particular instance the writing begins backhanded, and there is a reversion to the right-handed type, -- an unconscious reversion, which makes me think that is the natural method of writing;1907, The Official Report of the Trial of Charles Louis Tucker for the Murder of Mabel Page: In the Superior Court of Massachusetts, Volume...

adjectiveRetrospective, occurring after the fact rather than in advance.

  • The Mutazilīs, in a counterpolemic, allege that the argument advanced by the Asharīs is implicitly a backhanded and retrospective way of imputing heresy to the early community of believers.2006, Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, →ISBN, page 196

adjectiveSelf-serving, corrupt, slipshod, or neglectful.

  • Perhaps omitting Weber from footnotes is intended to avenge his backhanded treatment of the American Puritans (and by extension their academic champions), whom he virtually ignored—albeit with unhappy consequences for his own work.2005, David J. Libby, Paul Spickard, Susan Ditto, Affect and Power: Essays on Sex, Slavery, Race, and Religion, →ISBN, page 170
  • His backhanded way of analyzing values means that there could be no systematic treatment of the functional consequences for behavior of specific ideas, values, and idea-value complexes.1998, Daniel W. Rossides, Social Theory: Its Origins, History, and Contemporary Relevance, →ISBN, page 178
  • We never expected to have to shred their personal lives, their greedy excesses, their nefarious, backhanded business dealings for their own personal gain in front of the public that had placed them on their pedestals.2010, Wayne Berry, The Guesthouse, →ISBN, page 48

More sentences with backhanded

  • During the boxing match, I accidentally backhanded my opponent.From the entry backhand
  • In between all of the blame shifting and backhanded advice, some incels attempt to discuss a solution to their 'inceldom'.2017, Ed Pitt, “Sick Sad World”, in Farrago, 1st edition, University of Melbourne, page 29. From the entry inceldom
  • In a backhanded compliment, Markopolos said the SEC is a "bad regulator, but the best of a very sorry lot."2009 February 4, Robert Chew, “A Madoff Whistle-Blower Tells His Story”, in Time, retrieved 07 Oct 2013. From the entry backhanded compliment
  • The other reason was that Waldo had backhanded her across the mouth after she refused to give him beso negro.1997, Barry Gifford, Baby Cat-Face. From the entry beso negro
  • Perhaps, finally, the Netherlands will shed itself of the backhanded compliment of being the best team never to win a world championship.1998 June 29, Jere Longman, “World Cup '98: Dutch Fans Are Orange (Hair, Dresses, Clogs and Faces) With Envy”, in New York Times…. From the entry backhanded compliment
  • I figured ever compliment I received was me being “negged”—a tactic where people highlight your difference or offer a backhanded compliment in order to make you feel insecure.2022, Devon Price, chapter 7, in Michele Eniclerico, editor, Unmasking Autism, New York: Harmony Books, →ISBN, page 204. From the entry neg

Meaning of backhanded

  1. adjective With the back of the hand.
  2. adjective Involving a backward flip of the hand.
  3. adjective Insincere, sarcastic, ironic, or self-contradictory.

Full definition of backhanded

Questions about backhanded in a sentence

How do you use backhanded in a sentence?
Backhanded is used as an adjective and adverb. For example: “During the boxing match, I accidentally backhanded my opponent.”
What is a short sentence with backhanded?
“During the boxing match, I accidentally backhanded my opponent.”
What does backhanded mean?
Backhanded means with the back of the hand.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: backhanded (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use backhanded in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/backhanded. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.