shovel-handed
English
Etymology
shovel + handed
Adjective
shovel-handed (comparative more shovel-handed, superlative most shovel-handed)
- brawny and large, with connotations of being unintelligent, as one who is fit for digging ditches.
- 1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II, page 449:
- I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all.
- 2011, Sophie Hardach, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages, →ISBN:
- There was his cousin, Sivan, the once shy boy who had grown as bulky as his shovel-handed father and then some more, and had learned to use his body efficiently with the help of the local kick-boxing club.
- 2011, Richard Matheson, Steel: And Other Stories, →ISBN, page 153:
- “Foaming moonstruck octopus! Shovel-handed ape!” The blood-laced eyes of Ruthlen Beauson bagged gibbously behind their horn-rimmed lenses.
- 2011, Gordon Burn, Best and Edwards, →ISBN, page 132:
- They belonged to the shovel-handed goalkeeper whose size the first time he'd seen him had made him bolt for home, the Ulsterman and Munich survivor Harry Gregg.
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