"hand-me-down" meaning in English

See hand-me-down in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Etymology: Contains the phrase hand down. Etymology templates: {{m|en|hand down}} hand down Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} hand-me-down (not comparable)
  1. Used or second-hand, passed along by its prior user. Tags: not-comparable Translations: oruoru (Maori)
    Sense id: en-hand-me-down-en-adj-YpAE8CNV
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: hand-me-on [dated]

Noun

Forms: hand-me-downs [plural]
Etymology: Contains the phrase hand down. Etymology templates: {{m|en|hand down}} hand down Head templates: {{en-noun}} hand-me-down (plural hand-me-downs)
  1. An item that is passed along for someone else to use.
    Sense id: en-hand-me-down-en-noun-MzNwMOpH
  2. (especially) A piece of clothing or other item which has been outgrown by an older sibling and passed down to a younger one. Tags: especially Categories (topical): Clothing Translations (a piece of clothing that is passed along for a younger sibling to use): deixalla [feminine] (Catalan), aflagt stykke tøj [neuter] (Danish), afdankertje [neuter] (Dutch), αποφόρι (apofóri) [neuter] (Greek), उतरन (utran) [feminine] (Hindi), kinőtt ruha (Hungarian), お下がり (osagari) (Japanese), お古 (ofuru) (Japanese), oruoru (Maori), поде́ржанная вещь (podéržannaja veščʹ) [feminine] (Russian)
    Sense id: en-hand-me-down-en-noun-sCykeS08 Disambiguation of Clothing: 27 1 72 0 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 34 6 56 5 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 19 17 59 5 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 27 11 55 8 Disambiguation of 'a piece of clothing that is passed along for a younger sibling to use': 27 73
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: hand-me-on [dated]

Verb

Forms: hand-me-downs [present, singular, third-person], hand-me-downing [participle, present], hand-me-downed [participle, past], hand-me-downed [past]
Etymology: Contains the phrase hand down. Etymology templates: {{m|en|hand down}} hand down Head templates: {{en-verb}} hand-me-down (third-person singular simple present hand-me-downs, present participle hand-me-downing, simple past and past participle hand-me-downed)
  1. (rare) To pass along to someone else. Tags: rare
    Sense id: en-hand-me-down-en-verb-L3TQWwoO
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: hand-me-on [dated]

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for hand-me-down meaning in English (9.2kB)

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          "ref": "1963, Cleveland Amory, Earl Blackwell, editors, Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables, Harper & Row, page 40",
          "text": "“See into life, don’t just look at it” is her [Anne Baxter’s] creditable credo, hand-me-downed from her famous architect grandfather, the late Frank Lloyd Wright.",
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        },
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          "ref": "1966, Mike Cohen, The Bright Young Man, J. B. Lippincott Company, page 27",
          "text": "The carpet was a montage of fade and unfade indicating that when new it had been used in another office—probably Mr. Barlowe’s—and then hand-me-downed when the decorators had cut loose.",
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          "text": "He had scraped together the funds to traipse off to the latest Bonanza camp, to buy speculative stocks, liquor and fine Sacramento meals for his boomer friends and fancy women, while my mother cut pieces of cardboard and canvas into soles to stuff inside our shoes to stop the holes, and hand-me-downed our clothes.",
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          "ref": "2006, Tom Bailey, Cotton Song, Shaye Areheart Books, page 283",
          "text": "The first thing Gabe saw as they pulled close was the flashing lights of Ruleton’s two police cruisers parked off to the side of the road—the new one Sheriff Dodd’s, the humble other the battered black-and-white that he’d hand-me-downed to his deputy, Ralph Simpson.",
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          "text": "He could not change the past but he was determined that he would not follow in the grand family hand-me-downed legacy.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Carol Zoref, Barren Island, New Issues Poetry & Prose, page 157",
          "text": "Instead I changed into a blue skirt and a white blouse with a scalloped collar, hand-me-downs from Marie Dowd that she had gotten hand-me-downed from cousins in Brooklyn who went to Catholic school.",
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        {
          "ref": "2018, Ty Marshall, “Love Seldom. Trust Never.”, in Goodfellas, Urban Books, chapter one (The Early Years)",
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      "sense": "a piece of clothing that is passed along for a younger sibling to use",
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      "sense": "a piece of clothing that is passed along for a younger sibling to use",
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      "word": "поде́ржанная вещь"
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          "text": "1983, 19th of March, Presidential Radio Address by Ronald Reagan\nI don't want America's recovery and security to be sacrificed on an altar of discredited hand-me-down theories. And if you'll help us, they won't be."
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          "ref": "2022 November 2, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 58",
          "text": "The old Pacers have vanished, replaced by a mix of hand-me-down fleets.",
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  "word": "hand-me-down"
}

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      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hand-me-downed",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "hand-me-down (third-person singular simple present hand-me-downs, present participle hand-me-downing, simple past and past participle hand-me-downed)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with rare senses"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1963, Cleveland Amory, Earl Blackwell, editors, Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables, Harper & Row, page 40",
          "text": "“See into life, don’t just look at it” is her [Anne Baxter’s] creditable credo, hand-me-downed from her famous architect grandfather, the late Frank Lloyd Wright.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1966, Mike Cohen, The Bright Young Man, J. B. Lippincott Company, page 27",
          "text": "The carpet was a montage of fade and unfade indicating that when new it had been used in another office—probably Mr. Barlowe’s—and then hand-me-downed when the decorators had cut loose.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1990, Jan E. Dizard, Howard Gadlin, The Minimal Family, The University of Massachusetts Press, page 41",
          "text": "The traditional family was poorly adapted to consumption: its raison d’être was rooted in sharing, hand-me-downing, and cooperative endeavor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Oakley M. Hall, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades: A Mystery Novel, Berkeley, Calif., Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, page 124",
          "text": "He had scraped together the funds to traipse off to the latest Bonanza camp, to buy speculative stocks, liquor and fine Sacramento meals for his boomer friends and fancy women, while my mother cut pieces of cardboard and canvas into soles to stuff inside our shoes to stop the holes, and hand-me-downed our clothes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Tom Bailey, Cotton Song, Shaye Areheart Books, page 283",
          "text": "The first thing Gabe saw as they pulled close was the flashing lights of Ruleton’s two police cruisers parked off to the side of the road—the new one Sheriff Dodd’s, the humble other the battered black-and-white that he’d hand-me-downed to his deputy, Ralph Simpson.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Lee Beck, From a Dark Place, AuthorHouse, page 442",
          "text": "He could not change the past but he was determined that he would not follow in the grand family hand-me-downed legacy.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Carol Zoref, Barren Island, New Issues Poetry & Prose, page 157",
          "text": "Instead I changed into a blue skirt and a white blouse with a scalloped collar, hand-me-downs from Marie Dowd that she had gotten hand-me-downed from cousins in Brooklyn who went to Catholic school.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018, Ty Marshall, “Love Seldom. Trust Never.”, in Goodfellas, Urban Books, chapter one (The Early Years)",
          "text": "He wore a white dress shirt that was buttoned uncomfortably tight around his neck, a black tie, and an oversized blazer that had been hand-me-downed from one of his older cousins.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To pass along to someone else."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "pass",
          "pass"
        ],
        [
          "along",
          "along"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(rare) To pass along to someone else."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "rare"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "dated"
      ],
      "word": "hand-me-on"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hand-me-down"
}
{
  "called_from": "page/2517",
  "msg": "UNIMPLEMENTED parse_translation_template: trans-top-see {1: 'used or second-hand, passed on by a previous owner', 2: 'secondhand'}",
  "path": [
    "hand-me-down",
    "trans-top-see"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "adjective",
  "title": "hand-me-down",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.