sure-handed

See also: surehanded

English

Alternative forms

• surehanded

Etymology

sure +‎ handed

Adjective

sure-handed

1. Dexterous; skilled and smooth at a manual task.
   • 2006, Bob Chandler, Bill Swank, Bob Chandler's Tales from the San Diego Padres, →ISBN, page 142:

     It was so cold that the ball clanked off the glove of the usually sure-handed Reds infielder for an error.

   • 2012, Joanne Rock, Sliding Into Home, →ISBN:

     These guys are sure-handed and smooth, rarely dropping the ball on the field, but routinely doing so off it.

   • 2014, Bob Marchinetti, Pirate Gold: The 1960 Season, →ISBN, page 10:

     The Bucs committed a staggering 7 errors in the game, including 3 by the usually sure-handed Groat.

   • 2015, Jo Ann Ferguson, An Unexpected Husband: A Regency Romance, →ISBN:

     “My carriage is this way. My driver has not taken a blow to the skull, so he will be more sure-handed.”

2. Confident and skillful; practiced; expert.
   • 1861, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage:

     And till we can recover that, we shall never be able to have a Government firm-seated and sure-handed.

   • 2010, John A. Tracy, Profit Analysis for Business Managers, →ISBN:

     All managers having profit responsibility should have a sure-handed analytical grip on how changes in sales volume and sales prices impact their profit performance.

   • 2013, Iain Sharp, Heaphy: Artist, Explorer, Settler, →ISBN:

     While Heaphy was in the role of hawk-eyed, sure-handed, specimen-procuring guide, Hochstetter, Haast and their colleagues were delighted by him and quick to sing his praises.

3. Skillfully executed.
   • 1944 February 19, Virgil Thomson, edited by Tim Page, Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940–1954, published 2014, →ISBN:

     Neither his sure-handed scoring, however, almost too sure-handed for a young man of twenty-five who is going to be a real composer, nor the diffuse and improvisatory character of the composition inspires the confidence in Mr. Bernstein's original gifts that this reviewer entertains towards his genius as an executant and an interpreter.

   • 2007, Joseph Hansen, The Complete Brandstetter, page 884:

     And the first days of it, he was going to give to bookshelves and pictures — those watercolors by Larry Johns he'd bought last year, nice, loose, sure-handed sketches of the surf, rocks, dunes around the handsome beach house Johns shared with Tom Owens.

   • 2013, Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin's 2014 Movie Guide, →ISBN:

     Affleck's sure-handed direction of Chris Terrio's screenplay manages to shift seamlessly from incredible tension in Iran and internecine politics in Washington, D.C., to the absurdity of the scheme in Hollywood.

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