#Handy meaning how to#

There are trouble makers in the bunkhouse Curley, the boss's son, a little fellow handy with his fists, likes to take on big clumsy fellows, pick fights with them. Marsh, ' John Steinbeck's Tale of Drifting Men,' in the New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art (February 28, 1937), reprinted in Michael Meyer, ed., The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men (2009): ' This is certainly the conclusion that a reviewer of Of Mice and Men, writing in 1937, draws in his brief description of Curley. Steinbeck seems to be using handy in the conversation as a truncated form of the idiomatic phrase 'handy with his fists,' meaning in a narrow sense 'a good pugilist ' and in a broader sense 'a good fighter. What would have been the the standard American English equivalent of handy, meaning a person inclined to physical violence, in the 1930s?

Is it an example of American dialectal usage? Is it an example of Candy's idiolect? I'm guessing this is an example of semantic shifting but I have never come across this secondary meaning before.Īm I mistaken? Do the three instances of 'handy' in the excerpt above refer to Curley as being skilled with his hands. For example, a mother who slaps her children is una mamma manesca, and a husband who beats his wife is un marito manesco. In Italian the term manesco, which is derived from the noun mano (hand), refers to someone who is quick to use their hands in a violent manner. However, none of the dictionaries I checked The American Heritage Dictionary ( AHD), Oxford Dictionaries ( EOD), Collins ( CED), and Cambridge Dictionary ( CD) tell me that handy refers to a an aggressive person who uses their fists or hands. Online some sites suggest that handy denotes physical strength, and some suggest that Curley is skilful in picking fights.

#Handy meaning how to#

We learn that Curley is a bit of a boxer “He done quite a bit in the ring”, so he knows how to throw a punch and defend himself in a fight. The adjective “handy' usually refers to something conveniently near, a useful object or someone skilful with their hands but in this instance it seems that handy refers to someone who is prone to using physical violence.

'That's the boss's son,' he said quietly.