firsthand

Direct, without intermediate stages.

Adjective

  1. Direct, without intermediate stages.
    • firsthand knowledge
    • I recently received a firsthand report from an old friend — John A. Keel — who until last year was as skeptical a newshound as I have known. - 1967, Ivan Terence Sanderson, Uninvited Visitors:
    • Ours is a generation of aromantics, jaded about matters of the heart — often before gaining firsthand experience. - 1986, Wanda Urbanska, The Singular Generation, Doubleday & Company, published 1986, →ISBN, page 86:
  2. Not previously owned or used; contrasted with secondhand.
    • a firsthand copy

Origin

From first + hand.

Forms

first hand first-hand

Derived

firsthand learning

Adverb

  1. Directly or from personal experience.
    • Hell and tarnations, I've known them for muddleheads and blockheads half my life, and firsthand, but I sure didn't expect them to take leave of their senses, insulting our office of President, making our Party into a...
    • In the course of three intensive days in and around Guiyu's four villages, the small investigative team witnessed firsthand what passes for recycling of e-waste in Asia. - 2002, Jim Puckett, 5:35 from the start, in...
    • 2003, Katherine Edgar, “Levant”, in Jennifer Speake, Literature of Travel and Exploration: G to P However, the romantic subjective approach persisted, allowing the nontraveling reader the illusion of experiencing the...

Forms

first hand first-hand