single-handedness

Noun

single-handedness (uncountable)

1. The quality of having a dominant hand; left-handedness or right-handedness.
   • Recent experiments and observations, however, prove that single-handedness is merely the result of faulty or restricted education. Careful observations have shown that out of every hundred persons born into this world eighty are congenitally ambidextrous — that is to say, they will instinctively...1907, The New England Medical Gazette - Volume 42, page 325
   • But as we rise in the evolutionary scale of normal creatures, and as we exclude disease, ambidexterity progressively gives way to single-handedness, generally right-handedness.1913, Albert Henry Buck, A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences
2. Chirality
   • In the complexes, the direction and affinity of the hydroxy group for hydrogen bond toward the carboxy group of poly-12 may be the most important factor to control both the helical sense and an extent of the single-handedness, and therefore, the complexes with amino alcohols showed an intense ICD...2000, Nina Berova, Koji Nakanishi, Robert Woody, Circular Dichroism: Principles and Applications, →ISBN, page 529
   • So not only does the hand of the amino acids dictate the hand of the helix they form, but more profoundly, single-handedness appears to be necessary for helices to form at all.2008, CIBA Foundation Symposium, Biological Asymmetry and Handedness, →ISBN, page 26
3. Lack of assistance.
   • The process practices autarchy, exclusivism or single-handedness instead of a radical universalism, based on democracy and equality that can be achieved through a united struggle.2004, Samir Dasgupta, The Changing Face of Globalization, →ISBN
   • In the UK, much of the progress in general practice over the recent past has evolved in the context of group practice and the primary health care team — the credo of modern-day doctoring. Single-handedness puts a question mark over the primacy and validity of these ideas.2006, Judith Collier, J. A. B. Collier, J. Murray Longmore, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties, →ISBN
4. The quality of having or involving the use of only one hand.
   • Maurice Ravel wrote a Concerto pour piano en sol majeur for both a left hand and a right hand, whereas the Concerto pour la main gauche marks itself as different in its declaration of single-handedness.2006, Neil William Lerner, Joseph Nathan Straus, Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music, →ISBN, page 75
   • Although an extended period of visual contemplation may lead a viewer to notice the pianist's single-handedness, the scene encourages admiration for the achievement of technical skill against what are imagined as great odds.2009, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring: How We Look, →ISBN