ˈhand-saw
A saw managed by one hand.
| 1411 Nottingham Rec. II. 86, j hondsawe. 1497 Naval Acc. Hen. VII (1896) 324 Also for an handesaw price vj{supd}. 1573–80 Baret Alv. H 78 A hand sawe..vne scietie, ou petite scie. 1596 Shakes. 1 Hen. IV, ii. iv, 187 My Buckler cut through and through, my Sword hackt like a Hand-saw. 1664 Cotton Scarron. Pref. (D.), 'Tis all the world to a handsaw but these barbarous Rascals would be so ill-manner'd as to laugh at us as confidently as we do at them. 1798 Greville in Phil. Trans. LXXXVIII. 413 A stone⁓cutter was sawing rock crystal with a hand-saw. 1867 Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Hand-saw, the smallest of the saws used by shipwrights, and used by one hand. |
b. In the following, handsaw is generally explained as a corruption of heronshaw or hernsew, dial. harnsa, heron. (Other conjectures taking hawk in a different sense from the bird have also been made.) No other instances of the phrase, (except as quotations from Shakespeare), have been found.
| 1602 Shakes. Ham. ii. ii. 367, I am but mad North, North-West: when the Winde is Southerly, I know a Hawke from a Handsaw. |