dirty-handed

English

Etymology

From dirty +‎ handed.

Adjective

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

1. Having unwashed hands.
   • 1871, Louisa May Alcott, Little Men:

     Then the dirty-handed society went off the wash, followed by the Professor, trying to calm the anxiety of Rob, who had been told by Tommy that all water was full of invisible pollywogs.

   • 2014, Jerome K. Jerome, The Complete Jerome K. Jerome: The Collected Works, →ISBN:

     Generally I cooked my own meals in my own frying pan; but occasionally I would indulge myself with a more orthodox dinner at a cook shop, or tea with hot buttered toastat a coffee shop; andbut for the greasy table-cloth and the dirty-handed waiter, such would have been even greater delights.

   • 2012, Howard Barker, Barker: Plays Six, →ISBN:

     So little time I cannot hope to wash my hands – HELENA : No – VANYA: But must come dirty-handed –

2. Working-class, rough or boorish
   • 1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Treasure of Franchard:

     As it was, the whole family loved it, and the Doctor was never better inspired than when he narrated its imaginary story and drew the character of its successive masters, from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its walls after the sack of the town, and past the mysterious engraver of the runes, down to the long-headed, dirty-handed boor from whom he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense.

   • 2012, Steven Shankman, Stephen W. Durrant, Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons, →ISBN, page 131:

     Nor, it seems, was disguise a practice in which elites engaged; it was the “dirty-handed” men of action, a onetime convict laborer such as Yu Rang, a former butcher such as Nie Zheng, who disguised their physical identities in this way.

   • 2003, Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880, page 1134416814:

     ...the educated elite, according to Wiener, has become increasingly anti-industrial, increasingly ashamed of the materialism and money-grubbing of dirty-handed industry, increasingly hostile to technological progress and economic growth.

3. Guilty, corrupt
   • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch:

     There were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty business; and Will protested to himself that his share in bringing Mr. Brooke through would be quite innocent.

   • 2011, Richard Belfield, A Brief History of Hitmen and Assassinations, →ISBN:

     As another CIA officer, Bill Harvey, remarked, 'No one wanted to charge the president personally with the complete, dirty-handed details of the assassination plans.

   • 2014, Vance Munraff, Sounds Like Paradise, →ISBN:

     Crooked law enforcement, corrupt lawmakers, dirty-handed and hypocritical adjudicators and other miscellaneous murky state and Federal government officials.

Derived terms

• dirty-handedness