loose-handed

English

Etymology

loose +‎ handed

Adjective

loose-handed (comparative more loose-handed, superlative most loose-handed)

1. With open hand (as opposed to a fist).
   • 2011, Penelope Fletcher, Demon Day:

     His punches alternated between uppercuts and loose-handed swipes.

   • 2010, James Lovegrove, The Age of Odin, →ISBN:

     He was holding back, a little. The blows were loose-handed.

   • 1933, Albert Shaw, Review of Reviews and World's Work - Volume 88, page 21:

     A diamond ring flashes as he gestures, not with the thrust of a clenched fist but with loose-handed waves.

2. Characterized by broad sweeping movements.
   • 1999, Irene Guilford, The Embrace: A Novel, →ISBN, page 129:

     "When you are here," Martin cups the air vaguely in loose-handed gesture, "do you feel the freedom around you? Can you feel it?"

   • 1991, Luke Short, First Campaign, →ISBN, page 16:

     Varney made an impatient, down-sweeping, loose-handed gesture. "Quit it, Cole!" he said angrily.

   • 1973 October, “Double Hook Axe — Teaching Distance and Variety”, in Black Belt, volume 11, number 10, page 16:

     The chain has a whipping action-like many of the loose-handed whipping motions of the Northern bare-handed styles.

3. Casual; undisciplined or haphazard.
   • 2010, Robert Hastings, Back When Mary Alice Was Still a Blonde, →ISBN, pages 203–204:

     It was a state of being cumulatively nurtured by a flawless execution of the protocol rehearsed the evening prior (save for her own out-of-order seating), the forgiving tailoring of the bride's gown that gave away no secrets, the fact Mrs. June Helen Grinbar had seen fit to address her mess of a hairdo, and — last but not at all least — the absence of any inappropriate outbursts from Mrs. Geraldine Fessmire who, on the other hand, appeared especially groggy and inattentive during the whole event, making Elba Rae Van Oaks wonder if anyone ever especially audited Mr. Garland's loose-handed administration of her medicines.

   • 2002, Administration & society - Volume 34, page 588:

     The rather loose-handed ways in which Wilson presented his history and the generalizations he dared to make are also visible in later years.

   • 1875, Eliza Stephenson, Eglantine, page 36:

     Miss Fidger was the most delightfully loose-handed housekeeper that ever muddled up baker's, butcher's, and washerwomen's bills in one indiscriminate mass.

4. Lenient, permissive.
   • 2012, A. Lawrence Kolbe, William B. Tye, Stewart C. Myers, Regulatory Risk: Economic Principles and Applications to Natural Gas Pipelines and Other Industries, →ISBN, page 275:

     First, it was traditionally subject to loose-handed regulation, which opened the possibility of returns above the cost of capital to offset.

   • 1890, William Chambers, Robert Chambers, Chambers's Journal - Volume 67, Issue 1, page 161:

     Why should Life be a cruel taskmaster, gaunt and grim, priggish and precise, and not the jolly, generous, loose-handed friend who winks at faults, overlooks lapses, and lets things run free in a happy-go-lucky kind of way, the margin not counting?

   • 1859, Eliakim Littell, Robert S. Littell, Littell's Living Age - Volume 60, page 316:

     He was the most loose-handed husband possible with the marriage-reins with regard to every thing except money; and his wife had she been so minded, might have enjoyed any amount of questionable independence.

5. Spendthrift, profligate.
   • 2010, Sebastian Barry, Annie Dunne, →ISBN:

     I was so eager to make their bedclothes agreeable and nice, I am afraid I was a bit loose-handed with the starch bottle.

   • 1992, Linda Goodman, Linda Goodman's Love Signs: A New Approach to the Human Heart, →ISBN, page 539:

     From their hair styles to their clothing, from their ability to be patient (Cappy can, Leo can't), and from their banking practices (Cappy's a bit tightfisted, Leo a little loose-handed) to their speech (Cappy's is somewhat shy and gentle, Leo's is eloquent and dramatic), and from their method of reaching for the brass ring on the carousel (Cappy is watchful and carefully calculating, Leo is daring and impulsive), it sometimes seems as though they are from two different Universes.

   • 1883, J.B. Alden, The Library Magazine - Volumes 6-7, page 49:

     Lear may teach us to draw the line more clearly between a wise generosity and loose-handed weakness of giving;

   • 1872, Ouida, Folle-Farine - Part 1, page 144:

     By the smaller section of it—poor, unthrifty, loose-handed fools—who belied the province of their birth so far as to be quick to spend and slow to save, and who therefore fell into want and famine and had to borrow of others their children's bread, the old miller was hated with a hate deeper and stronger because foced to be mute, and to submit, to cringe, and to be trod upon, in the miserable servitude of the hopeless debtor.

6. Aimless
   • 2011, Sylvia Plath, Letters Home, →ISBN:

     I'm a model convalescent if I'm waited on by anonymous people whose job it is, but very bad at sitting loose-handed about our own small rooms.

   • 1961, Gladys Schmitt, Rembrandt: a novel, page 347:

     Harmen Gerritszoon himself was not a moldered corpse nor an old man remembering, wordless and loose-handed, in the sun;

   • 1874, Eliza Stephenson, Hope Meredith, page 253:

     He's some loose-handed fellow with nothing to do.

7. Wild or uncontrolled.
   • 1983, Hortense Calisher, Mysteries of motion, page 167:

     In San Diego, at the zoo, this cousin's four-year-old son, left loose-handed by a gossipy mother, had been drawn between the bars and trampled on by a suddenly rogue elephant.

   • 1912, Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations, The Young Woman's Journal - Volume 23, page 245:

     We had to hold our teams about half an hour until the immense herd passed. Men that were loose-handed fired many shots among them, and three bucks were killed.

   • 1831, Washington Irving, Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus:

     That cutpurse of the ocean and his loose-handed crew were effectually cured of their ambition to colonize.

8. (sports) Involving wrist action.
   • 2013, Robert Gardner, The Physics of Sports Science Projects, →ISBN, page 90:

     In which method of receiving the puck—with a fixed stick or a loose-handed stick—do you apply a bigger force to the puck?

   • 2004, Jerry Travis, Match Play, →ISBN, page 75:

     Then some sand wedges—loose-handed flop shots, cut shots, back in stance, forward in stance, different kinds of lies in the sand bunker.

   • 1961, Edmund H. Burke, Field and Target Archery, page 36:

     With the currently popular loose-handed grip, the wrist maintains a certain amount of flexibility.

   • 1920, Bernarr Macfadden, Macfadden's Encyclopedia of Physical Culture: A Work of Reference:

     In the very first place, cultivate a “loose-handed” way of hitting the ball— the arm should never be rigid and should snap the ball rather like a willow withe than strike it stiffly, as with a baseball bat.

9. (art) Sketchy and flowing rather than geometric and precise.
   • 2013, Sue Ferguson Gussow, Architects Draw: Freehand Fundamentals, →ISBN, page 83:

     In a search for the complex shifts of form in the foot's shaping, the drawings present a loose-handed version of planar slices.

   • 2004, Andre Duza, Dead Bitch Army, →ISBN, page 118:

     On the wall to his right, loose-handed paintings in dark, pungent red boasted familiar shapes; varied angles of human faces, mouths stretched open, lips curled back, eyes bulging, teeth clenched and grinding.

   • 2000, Marjorie Devon, Tamarind: forty years, page 106:

     Smith not only replaced Warhol's purposely bland flavors with posole (white hominy) which is popular in the Southwest, she also replaced Warhol's clinical rendition of the can with a loose-handed drawing and applied a jolly background ....

Adverb

loose-handed (comparative more loose-handed, superlative most loose-handed)

1. With a poor grip.
   • 2009, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dragonfly Falling: Shadows of the Apt 2, →ISBN:

     If Daklan had drawn the sword from his flesh then there would be more blood than he could have stanched, but Daklan was now stumbling away, loose-handed, then falling.

   • 1997, Patricia Anthony, God's Fires, page 344:

     Exiting in the order of their deaths: Senhora Teixeira, holding her unlit torch loose-handed, helping Maria Elena up the stair.

   • 1968, Elizabeth Spencer, This crooked way, page 156:

     That night at supper we heard the crash from the kitchen. "Well," said Amos, for I went on eating, "there you are. Loose-handed, just like I thought."

Anagrams

• noodleheads