HAND DOWN

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does hand down mean? 

• HAND DOWN (verb)
  The verb HAND DOWN has 1 sense:

1. passed on, as by inheritance

  Familiarity information: HAND DOWN used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HAND DOWN (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Passed on, as by inheritance

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Context example:

This ring was handed down through many generations

Hypernyms (to "hand down" is one way to...):

pass on (give to or transfer possession of)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something to somebody

 Context examples 

And how of you, young sir? bringing his heavy hand down on Alleyne's shoulder.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Any ignoramus can hand down his worthless memory by imposing it upon a mountain or a river. I need no such monument."

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into a resolute expression.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

One evening, about the third week after our start, the doctor had come down to see one of the prisoners who was ill, and putting his hand down on the bottom of his bunk he felt the outline of the pistols.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In vain Alleyne bethought him of where he was, and of those laws of good breeding and decorum which should restrain him: those colored capitals and black even lines drew his hand down to them, as the loadstone draws the needle, until, almost before he knew it, he was standing with the romance of Garin de Montglane before his eyes, so absorbed in its contents as to be completely oblivious both of where he was and why he had come there.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)