lily-handed
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Forms: form: more lily-handed
form: most lily-handed
form: lilyhanded
Etymology: From lily + handed, from the white color and delicacy of a lily.
Senses: examples: text: For the sake of these "lily-handed maidens so daintily occupied," to use the editor's words, and for their sakes alone, has he waded through so many pages of dense technicalities from Actinococcus to Wormskioldia.
ref: 1860, James Silk Buckingham, John Sterling, Frederick Denison Maurice, The Athenaeum - Issues 1706-1731, page 293:
text: So when he writes : ' When Love the lily-handed fought with death', it does not mar the beauty of the line to know that lily-handed was one of Robert Greene's concoctions...
ref: 1972, Dylan Thomas, Early Prose Writings, page 116:
text: Rawlings' defaulter is encumbered, most disgracefully, with the usual blonde, in this case the lily-handed cashier in a motion picture shop;
ref: 2014, Meredith Nicholson, Blacksheep! Blacksheep!: An American Story of Mystery and Adventure, →ISBN:
synonyms: ethereal
white-handed
glosses: Characterised by a delicate and pale-skinned beauty.
examples: text: “Let me see your passport,” said old Bill, “I mean your hand.” He was looking for the marks of toil. Alas, sometimes for a lily-handed parson!
ref: 1930, Andover Newton Bulletin:
text: 'I know more than any lily-handed pill-roller from the city,' he gasped as well as he could, trying to raise himself from the pillow and failing.
ref: 2011, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Dynasty 10: The Tangled Thread: The Tangled Thread, →ISBN:
text: The fishermen looked at Malcolm, who compared to them seemed incredibly soft and lily-handed.
ref: 2015, Jenny Colgan, Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, →ISBN:
synonyms: soft-handed
uncalloused
glosses: Having hands that are white due to lack of outdoor work; Unaccustomed to physical labor.
examples: text: In fact he was a shallow-brained, lily-handed fop, and, as may be supposed, a great favorite with a certain class of ladies who mistake impertinence for wit, and fine clothes and affected manners for refinement and solid accomplishments.
ref: 1859, T.W. Strong, Yankee-notions - Volume 8, page 26:
text: He was no lily-handed gardener, no finger-tip lover,who, with an ivory-handled sécateur, snips off minute dead twigs,and selects a rosebud for his buttonhole, but went about his business with the tender ruthlessness that true gardening demands.
ref: 1914, E.F. Benson, Arundel,:
text: Dad Silva had warned his classes, "Don't forget the country doctor often has to be not only physician but dentist, yes, and priest, divorce lawyer, blacksmith, chauffeur, and road engineer, and if you are too lily-handed for those trades, don't get out sight of a trolley line and a beauty parlor."
ref: 1925, Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith:
synonyms: word: dainty
word: dandy
word: anal-retentive
word: choosy
word: conscientious
word: dainty
word: exacting
word: fastidious
word: finical
word: finicking
word: finickity
word: finicky
word: finikin
word: fussy
word: hypercritical
word: lily-handed
word: meticulous
word: niggly
word: nitpickish
word: nit-picky
word: nitty
word: overcritical
word: overscrupulous
word: particular
word: pedantic
word: pernickety
word: persnickety
word: picky
word: beauish
word: buckish
word: coxcombical
word: dandiacal
word: dandified
word: dandy
word: dandyish
word: dandyistic
word: dudish
word: foppish
word: foppy
word: Jemmy-Jessamy
word: lily-handed
word: macaronic
word: swellish
word: Woosterian
glosses: Fastidious and foppish.