wide-handed

English

Etymology

wide +‎ handed

Adjective

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

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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)

1. 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 ...