Dictionary

one-handedness en · NOUN

Etymology

From one-handed + -ness.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) The quality of having a dominant hand; left-handedness or right-handedness.
   • Again some persons are too right-handed (I question, indeed, whether one-handedness, whether right or left be chiefly employed, does not in all cases involve a loss of power). 1875, Richard Anthony Proctor, Science Byways, page 326:
2. (uncountable) Chirality
   • It must be noted that the stimulating hypotheses of Cairns-Smith (1982) emphasizing the role of clays in the origin of life do not account for the crucial one-handedness of biopolymers required to ensure the survival of self-replicating organic systems. 2011, Faïza Bergaya, B.K.G. Theng, G. Lagaly, Handbook of Clay Science, →ISBN, page 383:
3. (uncountable) The possession of only one hand or the ability to use only one hand; the loss of the use of one hand.
   • The young man had married a woman who had only one hand, and it was on the fact of her one-handedness that my thought was focused. 2011, Hanna Zacks, More Than Meets the Eye: A Journey Into the Mysteries of Psychic Phenomena, →ISBN, page 48:
   • Phenomenologically speaking, such differences are immediately incorportated into the lived body by being endowed with meaning in the context of one's everyday activities. Thus one-handedness can be lived, for example, as difficulty with pouring water into a jug, blindness--as exclusion from social interaction, and deafness -- as peaceful silence in the midst of a noisy journey. 2014, Teodor Mladenov, Critical Theory and Disability: A Phenomenological Approach, →ISBN:
4. (uncountable) The state of choosing to use only one hand.
   • One-handedness is essential for training to great skill in balanced action with any sensible design of weapon, as in fencing, but more especially when fighting from behind a tree or when being prepared to run if overcome (except possibly with bows and arrows where the defense handedness is reversed.) 2001, Fred Howard, Human Creatures, →ISBN, page 121:
   • A later generation of bebop pianists would often be accused of one-handedness; their right hands flew along with melodies and improvisations, while their "weak" left hands just plonked chords. 2009, Robin Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, →ISBN:
   • Bond's production of the One-Handed Cigarette Roll has passed unattended — Mendez refuses to acknowledge the one-handedness simply to thwart Bond, whose cigarette rolling he believes to originate more from histrionic impulse than economic necessity. 1990, C. W. Smith, James Ward Lee, Thin Men of Haddam, →ISBN, page 11:
5. (uncountable) The quality of being designed for only one hand.
   • As can be witnessed in a performance of that work by Fleisher, it is indeed a dazzling display piece in which, if it is only heard and not seen, its one-handedness might evade listeners' notice. 2015, Nancy J. Hirschmann, Beth Linker, Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging, →ISBN, page 132:
6. (uncountable) A state in which only one person is active
   • Holding intercourse with Sir William at this date partook a good deal of the nature of a one-handed conversation, and the one-handedness seemed to increase when the only share of the host, in the post-prandial conviviality, consisted in passing the decanters, which Sir William was scrupulous to do. 1884, Good Words Volume 25, page 67:
7. (figuratively, uncountable) Weakness, limitation
   • Mr. Herbert makes his moan over the awful one-handedness and one-leggedness of our rich classes, who are smitten with the universal incapacity to help theniselves. 1892, The Review of Reviews - Volume 4, page 466:

Forms

Translations (2)

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