# red-handed

Pronunciation: say "red-HAN-did" /ˌɹɛdˈhændɪd/

## Adjective

1. In the act of doing something wrong, or showing clear evidence of guilt.
   - Simple: While doing something wrong, so there is no doubt that you did it.
   - _Security cameras caught the cashier red-handed slipping bills into his pocket._
   - _She was found red-handed, the forged checks still in her purse._
2. Having hands that are red with blood. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: With hands that are red because there is blood on them.
   - _She came in from the garden red-handed, having gashed her thumb on the shears._
   - _By the end of the shift, the butcher's apprentice was red-handed and exhausted._
3. Causing death and bloodshed; murderous and violent.
   - Simple: Full of killing and blood.
   - _History remembers him as a red-handed tyrant who ruled by the sword._
   - _The red-handed revolt left whole villages in ruins._

## Origin

From red + handed, likening the person to a murderer whose hands are red with the victim's blood. To be taken with red hand meant "to be caught in the act" in Scots law from at least the 15th century; Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819) has the first recorded taken red-handed, and the expression later became more common as caught red-handed.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/red-handed (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).