Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having white, delicate hands; hence, effeminate.

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

  • adjective Having white, delicate hands.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • "Well, I'd like to see any lily-handed doctor guy from the outside face the river trail in the winter," said Ben bitterly.

    The Woman from Outside [on Swan River] Hulbert Footner 1911

  • Rawlings 'defaulter is encumbered, most disgracefully, with the usual blonde, in this case the lily-handed cashier in a motion picture shop; and a man of Rawlings' intelligence would know at a glance that we are not villains of that breed.

    Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Meredith Nicholson 1906

  • She is also being asked to be very lily-handed and ladylike and dainty about it all.

    The Canadian Commonwealth 1903

  • And he himself had furnished the lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been stigmatized "Em'ly" in the banter of his associates, until he had taken up arms, as it were, to repress this derision.

    The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge 1895 Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

  • Some of you lily-handed chicken heads are actually present at the practices.

    NY Daily News 2011

  • I have watched, weighed, studied you; searched every stray record of your fair young life, found the clear pages all pure; and I have doubted, marvelled that you, lily - hearted, lily-souled, lily-handed, could cast the pearl of your love down in the mire, to be trampled by swinish feet. "

    At the Mercy of Tiberius 1872

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