secondhanded

Secondhand.

Adjective

  1. Secondhand.
    • The clerk studied them. "You could get secondhanded ones for half price," he told Aunt Julina kindly. - 1949, Mattie Virginia Harris, Weddin' Trimmin's, page 58:
    • If the article to which the label or brand is to be attached is secondhanded, the brand or label shall consist of the following: "This mattress (or other article of bedding) is secondhanded and has been sterilized." -...
    • "Secondhanded goods has chips," said the cobbler stoutly. "That is why they are secondhanded goods. - 1987, Walter Dumaux Edmonds, Rome Haul, →ISBN, page 170:

    1. Previously owned or used.

    2. Dealing in used goods.

      • You know, they had these secondhanded stores. Dad went to get me a pair of knee pants, but they'd been here too long! - 1976, Eliot Wigginton, I wish I could give my son a wild raccoon, →ISBN, page 358:
      • There were furniture stores, but so many of the secondhanded stores carried furniture. - 1996, Elizabeth Kytle, Home on the Canal, →ISBN, page 257:
      • I had a nice little half-iron bed painted with some kind of golden bronze paint, and a white dresser and a white chair. Babe bought them at a secondhanded store. - 2004, Elizabeth Kytle, Willie Mae, →ISBN, page 75:

    3. Indirect.

      • We "speak of the things that we have seen," and not as one who offers secondhanded reports. - 1855, Horatio Gates Jameson, A Treatise on epidemic cholera, page 198:
      • We believe that Peter, James, and John actually did see holy angels—did behold Meses and Elias, and see Jesus transfigured, upon secondhanded testimonies given on the subject. - 1961, Journal of Discourses - Volume 7,...
      • Religion thus enters upon a new phase, a stage wherein it gradually becomes secondhanded; always does a medicine man, a shaman, or a priest intervene between the religionist and the object of worship. - 2008, Urantia...
  2. Ersatz.
    • The common error in most architectural schools is that basic design is taught at an abstract level using contemporary artists as examples to go by. This secondhanded process usually produces little Mondrians, Bauers,...
    • “A grand scale is impersonal, and my thing, as you call it, is real and right here, right now, not some secondhanded satisfaction lording it over the flies." - 2014, Warren R. B. Dixon, The Copenhagen Interpretation,...
    • Other Federalist essayists urged the citizens of North carolina to cultivate an attachment to the national government "as necessary to our general happiness and as the best security against oppression,” while portraying...

Origin

From second + handed.

Forms

second-handed

Derived

secondhandedly secondhandedness

Adverb

  1. Secondhand.
    • Finding that I could not get an answer to my request from the trustees of the British Museum, I have come to the conclusion that these gentlemen did a great injustice in selling my collection at public auction, which...
    • If I got it from Mr. Rauh, I would get it secondhanded, or if I got it from you I would get it secondhanded. - 1957, United States Congress Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management...
    • In point of fact it was over fifteen, and even then she had bought it secondhanded, and almost unfit for use. - 2013, Emile Gaboriau, Other People's Money, →ISBN:

    1. In a used condition.

    2. Indirectly

      • What I have learned outside of what is written in this secret history regarding town and village government, we shall not here mention as it would be recorded from hearsay or secondhanded. - 1905, John Piter Anderson,...
      • A man in the country does his own thinking. Get him into town and he will be thinking secondhanded. - 2007 July-August, Will Rogers, “Ponderables”, in American Cowboy, volume 4, number 2, page 32:
      • Frank told me that you seemed upset because of my wire to Leo Morrison which, I understand, reached you secondhanded. - 2011, James Curtis, Spencer Tracy, →ISBN:
  2. In second place, repeating another.
    • The well-springs of scientific truth are not so far exhausted that there is nothing left for the engineering teacher, in the way of research, but to work at it secondhanded, perhaps going no further than to corroborate...
    • Of course, I think we go secondhanded into most of these conferences anyway, but in this case we would have a definite assurance we would be going in secondhanded. - 1960, United States Congress Senate Committee on...
    • But I suppose I am giving you all this second-handed, as you have probably seen the substance of it in the papers. - 2012, Samuel Longfellow, Life Of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Volume 1, →ISBN:

Forms

second-handed