naked-handed

English

Etymology

naked +‎ handed

Adjective

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

1. Lacking tools or weapons.
   • 2014, Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost:

     But what I like is the excitement of choosing a path carefully, in the fear that the quagmire may reach out and suck me down; to go into the swamp naked-handed and wrest from it treasures that bring me books and clothing, and I like enough of a fight for things that I always remember how I got them.

   • 1925, Ernest Ingersoll, The Ice Queen, →ISBN:

     "All right," Tug whispered back; "but we must get a stone or a club! 'Twon't do to go at 'em naked-handed."

   • 1890, Peter E. Gumaer, A History of Deerpark in Orange County, N.Y., page 27:

     The most ingenious of our own race of people would be puzzled to get into operation any works to answer that purpose, naked-handed as those people were, and in their state of ignorance when alone in this country.

2. (by extension) Defenseless.
   • 1851, The American Whig Review - Volume 7; Volume 13, page 109:

     Nay, was it not to be feared, that these continental democrats would prove utterly unproductive to the perfidious island, which had so often cajoled them, for months on months, to deliver them, in the end, naked-handed, to the vengeance of its monarchical and congenial allies?

See also

• bare-handed