Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Able to use both hands with equal ease; ambidextrous.
  • Double-dealing; deceitful; tricky.
  • noun A person who uses both hands with equal facility.
  • noun A double-dealer; one equally ready to act on either side in a dispute.
  • noun In law, a juror who takes money from both parties for giving his verdict.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Using both hands with equal ease.
  • noun A person who uses both hands with equal facility.
  • noun A double-dealer; one equally ready to act on either side in party disputes.
  • noun (Law) A juror who takes money from both parties for giving his verdict.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Someone who is ambidextrous.
  • noun obsolete, slang A lawyer who takes fees from both plaintiff and defendant, or that goes snacks with both parties in gaming.
  • noun by extension Someone who is two-faced; a double-dealer.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Medieval Latin ambidexter, from ambi- + dexter.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word ambidexter.

Examples

  • "Some people," I began, "are what is called ambidexter, and can use either hand with equal ease.

    Mr. Isaacs 1881

  • She again burst forth, for nature having given her considerable abilities, had lent her at the same time an energy of passion, far superior in power to the cold ambition of Irene, or the wily, ambidexter, shuffling policy of the Emperor.

    Count Robert of Paris 2008

  • Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to exaggerate.

    The Bride of Lammermoor 2008

  • With his left hand — for he was as ambidexter as a brave writer of this age requires — he caught up a handspike, and hurled it so truly along the line of torches that only two were left to blink; with his right he flung the last bale upon the shelf; then leaped out after it, and hurried it away.

    Mary Anerley Richard Doddridge 2004

  • They are, indeed, nearly ambidexter; but the sword, the spear and the fish-gig are always used with the right hand.

    The Settlement at Port Jackson 2003

  • But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: though the man's even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.

    Billy Budd 1924

  • You don't think me 'ambidexter,' or 'either-handed' ... and both hands open for what poems you will vouchsafe to me; and yet if you would let me see anything you may have in a readable state by you, ...

    The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Browning, Robert, 1812-1889 1898

  • (Judg. 3: 15; 20: 16), one unable to use the right hand skilfully, and who therefore uses the left; and also one who uses the left as well as the right, ambidexter.

    Easton's Bible Dictionary M.G. Easton 1897

  • But let us select them from the pages of the same writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance, Rumour's Prologue to the

    Essays in the Art of Writing Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the

    The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 David Masson 1864

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.