English

Alternative forms

• readyhanded

Adjective

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

1. Capable or skillful, especially at manual tasks.
   • 1875, Anthony Trollope, The American Senator:

     And ready money had been so much more plentiful of late, owing to poor John Morton's ready-handed honesty!

   • 1892, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

     All afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive.

   • 2013, Henry Morton Stanley, How I Found Livingstone, ISBN 178287240X:

     Abdul Kader, the tailor who had attached himself to me, as a man ready-handed at all things, from mending a pair of pants, making a delicate entremets, or shooting an elephant, but whom the interior proved to be the weakliest of the weakly, unfit for anything except eating and drinking — almost succumbed on this march.

Adverb

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

1. In readiness, fully prepared.
   • 1921, Pennsylvania School Journal - Volume 70, page 93:

     Higher education— general, professional, and technical— whether under public or private auspices must be helped to grow both in quantity and quality until it is able to meet full and ready-handed the problem of training the leadership of our democracy.

   • 1984, John Lorne Campbell, Highland songs of the Forty-five, page 13:

     Each arm well-sinewed, Each heart as a lion's ; Fiercely and wildly, Ready-handed and boldly, On each field be triumphant, Wherever you chance to be, Horo, make ready to go.

   • 2015, Francis B. Gummere (translator), Complete Beowulf - Old English Text, Translations and Dual Text, ISBN 1910630837:

     But he, mighty of main, made trial of me, and gripp'd ready-handed.