shovel-handed

English

Etymology

shovel +‎ handed

Adjective

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

1. brawny and large, with connotations of being unintelligent, as one who is fit for digging ditches.
   • 1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II, page 449:

     I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all.

   • 2011, Sophie Hardach, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages, →ISBN:

     There was his cousin, Sivan, the once shy boy who had grown as bulky as his shovel-handed father and then some more, and had learned to use his body efficiently with the help of the local kick-boxing club.

   • 2011, Richard Matheson, Steel: And Other Stories, →ISBN, page 153:

     “Foaming moonstruck octopus! Shovel-handed ape!” The blood-laced eyes of Ruthlen Beauson bagged gibbously behind their horn-rimmed lenses.

   • 2011, Gordon Burn, Best and Edwards, →ISBN, page 132:

     They belonged to the shovel-handed goalkeeper whose size the first time he'd seen him had made him bolt for home, the Ulsterman and Munich survivor Harry Gregg.