handed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of hand.

   The clerk handed each applicant a numbered slip.

   By dawn the keys had been handed to the new owners.

   Note

   The verb is regular, so one spelling does double duty: she handed it over, it had been handed over, it was handed down. The same form carries the verb's less familiar meanings too. On a ship, sails are handed when they are furled, and in a rare older use a couple could be handed, meaning pledged by the hand or handfasted.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having hands of a specified kind, or a specified number of hands.

   Ancient depictions of certain deities show them as many-handed, with arms fanning out in all directions.

   She was born left-handed and never adjusted to right-handed scissors.

   Note

   The word is built the way English builds many "having X" adjectives: hand plus -ed, like bearded or winged. It almost always stands as the second half of a compound, as in left-handed, right-handed, two-handed and many-handed, and it is hyphenated there. Standing alone, it would be read as the past tense of the verb.

3. 3
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a peculiar or characteristic manner of treating or dealing with other people.

   Critics called the government's response heavy-handed and out of proportion.

   She praised the mediator for being scrupulously even-handed throughout the dispute.

   Note

   Here the hand is figurative: it stands for the way someone deals with people, as in heavy-handed, even-handed or high-handed. Shakespeare's Cymbeline (1611) shows an older freedom in "as poisonous tongued as handed," where one modifier serves two compounds. Modern English keeps it fused and hyphenated. Unlike the literal "having hands" sense, it describes conduct, not anatomy.

4. 4
   adjectivecolloquial

   Existing in one of two mirror-image forms that cannot be superimposed on each other; chiral.

   Like a pair of gloves: mirror images that never quite swap places.

   Chemists describe the compound as handed because it cannot be laid over its own reflection.

   Quartz crystals are handed, growing in left- and right-rotating forms.

   Similarchiral

   Oppositeachiral

   Note

   The name comes from the hands themselves. Left and right hands are the familiar pair of mirror images that will not stack, so a molecule or crystal with the same property is called handed, and its two forms are left- and right-handed. Chiral is the technical term. Handed is the informal, explanatory one, useful when introducing the idea to someone who has never met chiral.

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