sure-handed

Adjective

sure-handed

1. Dexterous; skilled and smooth at a manual task.
   • It was so cold that the ball clanked off the glove of the usually sure-handed Reds infielder for an error.2006, Bob Chandler, Bill Swank, Bob Chandler's Tales from the San Diego Padres, →ISBN, page 142
   • These guys are sure-handed and smooth, rarely dropping the ball on the field, but routinely doing so off it.2012, Joanne Rock, Sliding Into Home, →ISBN
2. Confident and skillful; practiced; expert.
   • And till we can recover that, we shall never be able to have a Government firm-seated and sure-handed.1861, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage
   • All managers having profit responsibility should have a sure-handed analytical grip on how changes in sales volume and sales prices impact their profit performance.2010, John A. Tracy, Profit Analysis for Business Managers, →ISBN
3. Skillfully executed.
   • Neither his sure-handed scoring, however, almost too sure-handed for a young man of twenty-five who is going to be a real composer, nor the diffuse and improvisatory character of the composition inspires the confidence in Mr. Bernstein's original gifts that this reviewer entertains towards his...1944 February 19, Virgil Thomson, edited by Tim Page, Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940–1954, published 2014, →ISBN
   • And the first days of it, he was going to give to bookshelves and pictures — those watercolors by Larry Johns he'd bought last year, nice, loose, sure-handed sketches of the surf, rocks, dunes around the handsome beach house Johns shared with Tom Owens.2007, Joseph Hansen, The Complete Brandstetter, page 884