ˈdead-hand
Also dead hand.
1. a. = mortmain (of which it is a translation).
| [c 1380 Wyclif Wks. (1880) 131 Þei wolle not cesse til alle be conquerid in-to here dede hondis.] 1612 Bp. Hall Serm. v. 64 What liberal revenues..were then put into Mortmain, the dead-hand of the Church! 1670 Blount Law Dict. s.v. Ad quod damnum, The Land so given, is said to fall into a Dead hand. For a Body Politick dies not, nor can perform personal service to the King, or their Mesne Lords, as single Persons may do. 1879 Morley Burke (1880) 162 Forty-thousand serfs in the gorges of the Jura, who were held in dead-hand by the Bishop of Saint-Claude. 1880 A. J. Wilson in Macm. Mag. 469 That benevolence of the ‘dead hand’, which corrupts and blights all its victims. |
b. fig. An oppressive and retarding influence. Cf. mortmain sense c.
| [1871 Scribner's Monthly Nov. 19/1 The dead hand of Wesley has been stronger than the living hand of any pope.] 1935 Discovery Oct. 301/2 This cannot fairly be described as the ‘dead hand’ of the National Trust. 1955 Times 29 June 11/2 He would have fought the Government dead hand which fantastically enforces small papers ten years after the war. 1971 Daily Tel. (Colour Suppl.) 25 June 13/3 Eisenhower's dead hand on space was an obvious electoral issue for the two incoming presidential candidates to seize on. |
2. colloq. An expert (at doing something).
| 1848 Thackeray Bk. Snobs vii, He is a dead hand at piquet. 1862 G. O. Trevelyan Interludes in Verse & Prose (1905) 181 A young member of the Secretariat, a dead hand at a minute. 1888 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Robbery under Arms I. xv. 194 First-rate work it was, too; he was always a dead hand at splitting. |
Hence dead-ˈhanded a., oppressively old-fashioned or out-dated.
| 1928 D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley xviii. 333 It was stupid, dead-handed higher authority that made the army dead. |