handedness
a tendency to use one hand more than the other.
Origin of handedness
1Words Nearby handedness
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use handedness in a sentence
Before the mid-1950s, nobody imagined that the laws of physics gave a hoot about handedness.
Here are the Top 10 times scientific imagination failed | Tom Siegfried | March 31, 2022 | Science NewsAsymmetric catalysts allow manufacturers to use just one of those images, known as handedness compounds.
Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to duo who made a tool to build molecules in an environmentally friendly way | Frances Stead Sellers | October 6, 2021 | Washington PostAverage spin rate in revolutions per minute by pitch type and pitcher handedness, 2017-2019For pitchers with at least 50 pitches thrown in a given season.
What Really Gives Left-Handed Pitchers Their Edge? | Guy Molyneux | August 17, 2020 | FiveThirtyEightIt was associated with government heavy-handedness and viewed with disdain.
Annoyingly, Dating Naked tiptoes into heavy-handedness as a few of its subjects start telling sob stories.
In Praise of ‘Dating Naked’ and the Glorious Rise of Butts on Reality TV | Kevin Fallon | July 17, 2014 | THE DAILY BEAST
They do not welcome the Muslim Brothers' authoritarianism, oppression and heavy handedness, and they will not put up with it.
Deadspin ripped it for stuffiness, high-handedness, and general cluelessness.
New York Times Attack on Olympic Athlete Lolo Jones Unfounded and Unfair | David Roth | August 7, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTIn contrast to the seriousness and heavy-handedness of late-era Idol, X Factor feels positively effervescent.
Marian is delightful, with her waywardness and high-handedness; and Mrs. Owen likes originals, not feeble imitations.
A Hoosier Chronicle | Meredith NicholsonThe Vicomte laughed in his kindly way at what he was pleased to term my high-handedness.
Dross | Henry Seton MerrimanAddison we know to have been a little on the hither side of open-handedness.
Washington Irving | Henry W. BoyntonThis recognition of deft-handedness, small claim on consideration as it might seem, was still a balm to the child.
The Open Question | Elizabeth RobinsBut the partizans of Belinchon triumphed all along the line by reason of their numbers, their riches, and their open-handedness.
The Fourth Estate, vol. 2 | Armando Palacio Valds
British Dictionary definitions for handedness
/ (ˈhændɪdnɪs) /
the tendency to use one hand more skilfully or in preference to the other
the property of some chemical substances of rotating the plane of polarized light in one direction rather than another: See also dextrorotation, laevorotation
the relation between the vectors of spin and momentum of neutrinos and certain other elementary particles: See also helicity
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for handedness
[ hăn′dĭd-nĭs ]
A preference for using one hand rather than the other to perform most manual tasks and activities. Most people are right-handed. Historically, it has been theorized that handedness is associated with a dominance of the opposite cerebral hemisphere of the brain, but this has not been conclusively proven. Although the scientific basis for handedness is unknown, the fact that left-handed parents more frequently have left-handed offspring suggests at least a partial genetic component. Some experts believe that children are trained to favor one hand over the other (usually the right hand.). Handedness is usually established in the first few years of life.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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