Dictionary

shovel-handed en · ADJ

Etymology

From shovel + handed.

Meanings

1. brawny and large, with connotations of being unintelligent, as one who is fit for digging ditches.
   • 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, Sophie Hardach, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages, →ISBN:
   • “Foaming moonstruck octopus! Shovel-handed ape!” The blood-laced eyes of Ruthlen Beauson bagged gibbously behind their horn-rimmed lenses. 2011, Richard Matheson, Steel: And Other Stories, →ISBN, page 153:
   • 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. 1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II, page 449:
   • 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. 2011, Gordon Burn, Best and Edwards, →ISBN, page 132:

Forms