second hand

• secondhand, second-hand

second hand (not comparable)

1. Alternative form of secondhand

• secondhand and second-hand may be preferred spellings for the adjective meaning "not new", to avoid confusion with the noun "second hand" referring to the hand of a clock or watch.

• at second hand

second hand (plural second hands)

1. On a clock or watch, the hand or pointer that shows the number of seconds that have passed.
2. An intermediate person or means; intermediary.
   • {{quote-book|en|title=Memoirs of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin| page=135| url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1108034187%7C editor=Walter Scott| passage=“My Lord Oxford, by a second hand, proposed my being his chaplain, which I, by a second hand, excused.
   • 1832, James Sheridan Knowles, The Magdalen, and other tales‎, page 3:

     Under certain circumstances there is always a danger in a young man's playing the benefactor towards the other sex, in his own person. A thousand times better do it by a second hand — engage the services of some kind aunt or female cousin.

   • 2013, Bruce Crow, A Land of Strangers: Cane Creek Tennessee's Mormon Massacre and its Tragic Effects on the People Who Lived There‎:

     So nearly every name comes from a second hand source. The exception to this rule has been the vigilantes themselves. Rube Mathis and Jack Wells, both admitted to participating, and Mathis identified his brother.

   • 2014, Jill Mann, Life in Words: Essays on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Malory‎:

     The relation of Tristram's death is thus distanced from the narrative to which it belongs, and it is also distanced in that we do not see it happen with our own eyes, but hear of it by a second-hand report which introduces it incidentally, not for its own sake.

• at second hand

• second hand at OneLook Dictionary Search