backhanded

adj

1. With the back of the hand.

   “The trader roars like an animal whose paw has been caught in a trap, but he hauls back his other arm and lands a backhanded blow to the side of her head that knocks her sideways onto the babushki bench.”

2. Involving a backward flip of the hand.

   “Some casters can do a cross-body or backhanded cast quite effectively.”

   “With your palm facing down, your wrist snaps forward. This is the same type of motion used for the backhanded change-up.”

3. Insincere, sarcastic, ironic, or self-contradictory.

   “But modesty here is out of the question, and is often the most beggarly and back-handed friend that merit can have in its pay.”

   “Don't mistake this for even a backhanded compliment; that at least takes a wry sense of imagination. This is a patronizing compliment, which is worse than no compliment at all.”

   “He sometimes paid Descartes the backhanded compliment—backhanded because it detracted from the Frenchman's much-vaunted originality— of suggesting that his major achievement was to restore the study of Plato.”

   “Radio Savant wrote two other commercials filled with sarcasm, one of them entitled "Apology." In it, announcer Morris offers a backhanded apology that allows him to say ...."”

   “But on this particular occasion I was fired on as an individual by an entire battery of enemy artillery, and for some odd and backhanded reason I felt important.”

4. Indirect.

   “Only in grade 5 is he mentioned and in this backhanded way: "George Darwin, son of the famous English scientist, Charles Darwin." . . . But for what is Charles Darwin famous? You won't find it in the California elementary science textbooks.”

   “ClickStart could be seen as a backhanded way of admitting that, to date, the Internet had done exceedingly well by white people as compared to black;”

5. Backwards, turned around.

   “No one ever believed that Leif meant any harm, but all the luck he brought was backhanded.”

   “... it joins Clark fork twenty miles farther on, at the second apex of a sharp backhanded turn or zigzag by which this river shifts from one northwestward course to another...”

   “In America today, most Wire Eye Splices are made backhanded.”

6. inclining to the left

   “In this particular instance the writing begins backhanded, and there is a reversion to the right-handed type, -- an unconscious reversion, which makes me think that is the natural method of writing;”

7. Retrospective, occurring after the fact rather than in advance.

   “...but that is really a backhanded rent, because I have sold all the produce of my farm six months before I am called upon to pay the last six months' rent.”

   “The Mutazilīs, in a counterpolemic, allege that the argument advanced by the Asharīs is implicitly a backhanded and retrospective way of imputing heresy to the early community of believers.”

8. Self-serving, corrupt, slipshod, or neglectful.

   “Perhaps omitting Weber from footnotes is intended to avenge his backhanded treatment of the American Puritans (and by extension their academic champions), whom he virtually ignored—albeit with unhappy consequences for his own work.”

   “His backhanded way of analyzing values means that there could be no systematic treatment of the functional consequences for behavior of specific ideas, values, and idea-value complexes.”

   “We never expected to have to shred their personal lives, their greedy excesses, their nefarious, backhanded business dealings for their own personal gain in front of the public that had placed them on their pedestals.”

verb

1. (form-of, participle, past)simple past and past participle of backhand

adv

1. In a backhanded manner.

   “As the man crumpled forward, Snow took a further step with his right foot and brought the pole down backhanded with all his power into the right side of the man's head.”

   “Then with her curved hand knife, she proceeded to clean the selected sprouts, flipping them backhanded into the top crate on her left when done.”