Talk:safe pair of hands

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safe pair of hands

Looks like safe pair of hands to me. ---> Tooironic (talk) 13:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• ‘Pair of hands’ meaning what exactly, in your assessment? Ƿidsiþ 14:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• It's in several Learners' Dictionaries and Dictionaries of Idioms, including Oxford Dictionary of Phrase And Fable and phrasefinder. I have never heard a bungling politician described as a "dangerous pair of hands". Jnestorius (talk) 14:54, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I've never heard this term at all, regarding politicians or anyone else. Is it more common outside of the US? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:31, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly used quite a bit in the UK, especially in sporting contexts (see the many articles calling new England manager Roy Hodgson a "safe pair of hands"). Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:34, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep. If safe is taken as meaning secure or free from risk, then pair of hands would have to mean (something like) capability to perform a task - thus making pair of hands do the heavy lifting of the idiom, for no good reason. — Pingku^dimmi 15:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it's marginal, but I lean towards delete as it's a pretty transparent metaphor. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:24, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep (sense 3 at least): Though pair of hands does have a metaphorical meaning, it's along the lines of "help" or "assistance" - "It's good to have another pair of hands around here". pair of hands meaning "management" is, as far as I can tell, a sense unique to this phrase. Not so sure about the "good at catching a ball" sense - that seems pretty clear, surely? Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:34, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Sense 1 is defined as a verb and could be speedily deleted, perhaps replaced by {{&lit|safe|pair|hand}}. DCDuring TALK 16:57, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps move to etymology section? Jnestorius (talk) 18:43, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

We haven't made it a practice of explicating derivations of senses, but it might be useful. DCDuring TALK 00:12, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

As we feel compelled to lexicalize terms produced by normal operation of metonymy and live metaphor, this will be kept, notwithstanding my feeling that it be deleted. Something called "Phrase finder" (UK-based), the sole OneLook reference to have this, defines it as follows: "A reliable, if somewhat dull, person who can be entrusted not to make a mistake with a task." That seems to me sufficiently far removed from literal meaning to be includable. DCDuring TALK 16:57, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Kept. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:48, 16 August 2012 (UTC)