Dictionary

handlesome en · ADJ

Etymology

From handle + -some.

Meanings

1. (rare) Typified by, or requiring handling; (by extension) difficult to manage
   • River navigation is a different thing to steering a motor-car on solid dry land. But a thirty horse-power launch, doing thirteen miles an hour, is a handlesome craft, and we soon left behind us. 1908, Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News, volume 68, pages 106–107:
   • "[…] Tom, you had better hunt the bitch pack, Dog hounds is none so handlesome […] 1937, Patrick Reginald Chalmers, The horn: a lay of the Grassington fox-hounds, page 50:
   • She said: "So I sure got my hands full." Handful. To mean: handlesome. Fit to be handed from hand to hand. Hand me down my walkincane. 1948, Robert Faucett Gibbons, The Patchwork Time, page 20:

Forms