wide-handed

English

Etymology

From wide +‎ handed.

Adjective

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

Having hands that are wide.
- 1898, Jean Paul Richter, Lectures on the National Gallery, page 50:
  The two masters have fundamentally different ideals of the human form : Fra Filippo's figures are short and thick, round-headed, and wide-handed ; Botticelli's, on the contrary, are tall and slender, with long oval faces and narrow bony hands
- 1963 May, Robert Gannon, “Why Sports Records are Being Broken: Science or Supermen?”, in Popular Science, page 60:
  But wide-handed, beef-shouldered Jack Nicklaus, present U.S. Open champ, commonly drives the ball 260 yards, sometimes tops 325.
- 1904, Hermann Oppenheim, Diseases of the nervous system, page 922:
  Marie makes a distinction between the long-handed and the wide-handed forms.
- 2000, John Clagett, Captain Whitecap, →ISBN, page 72:
  Handy was a brown-faced man with crisply curling brown hair and blue eyes; a wide-handed, capable Philadelphia seaman.
Characterized by hands held open and splayed fingers.
- 2007, Veronique Renard, Pholomolo: No Man No Woman, →ISBN:
  It was a strange kind of clapping; a sort of wide-handed upward clap, compounded by the exaggerated nasal voice the hijras used in speech.
- 2009, Joe Pernice, It Feels So Good When I Stop, →ISBN:
  He gave Swainer a wide-handed wave.
- 2014, Fred Burton, Samuel M. Katz, Under Fire, →ISBN:
  Governments did not dispatch their most elite units, men who are truly not replaceable, unless the situation warranted a razor-sharp slice and not a wide-handed slap.
Characterized by hands held away from the torso.
- 2011, Gary Steven Gautier, Heal Thyself, Optimum Health Forever, →ISBN, page 90:
  I like doing 100 by doing 40 normal, 30 wide-handed position, and then 30 in the close-handed position.
- 2014, Lynda La Plante, Twisted, →ISBN:
  He gave a wide-handed gesture, puzzled as to why she was at his flat and picking up from the way she clenched her mouth so tightly that she was very tense.
Generous
- 2001, Kurt Gänzl, Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, →ISBN, page 2247:
  His songwriting success brought Yvain to the notice of wide-handed theatre magnate Gustave Quinson, who had produced Henri Christin6's Phi-Phi three years earlier and, in spite of the fact that the composer had not a full score to his name, Quinson signed him up to write three musicals.
- 2012, Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, →ISBN:
  May God, through the wide-handed grace of His pity grant some kind of amnesty.
- 2014, Janet Dailey, Aspen Gold, →ISBN:
  The men and women of my time were big-hearted and wide-handed people.

Adverb

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

In a wide-handed manner.
- 1889, William Larminie, Glanlua and Other Poems, page 53:
  Not such are the beings that earth now breeds : No more the vast god nor the demon : her seeds Wide-handed she scatters, wide-handed feeds
- 1914, Albert Payson Terhune, Dad, page 82:
  Wide-handed he struck and with open palm on the portion of the bargee's anatomy which, in that position, presented the largest and, in all respects, the most convenient ...