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Hand down   /hænd daʊn/   Listen
verb
Hand  v. t.  (past & past part. handed; pres. part. handing)  
1.
To give, pass, or transmit with the hand; as, he handed them the letter.
2.
To lead, guide, or assist with the hand; to conduct; as, to hand a lady into a carriage.
3.
To manage; as, I hand my oar. (Obs.)
4.
To seize; to lay hands on. (Obs.)
5.
To pledge by the hand; to handfast. (R.)
6.
(Naut.) To furl; said of a sail.
To hand down, to transmit in succession, as from father to son, or from predecessor to successor; as, fables are handed down from age to age; to forward to the proper officer (the decision of a higher court); as, the Clerk of the Court of Appeals handed down its decision.
To hand over, to yield control of; to surrender; to deliver up.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hand down" Quotes from Famous Books



... national epic, a wealth of saga-material replete with interesting episodes, picturesque and dramatic incidents and strongly defined personages, yet she never found her Homer, a gifted poet to embrace her entire literary wealth, to piece the disjointed fragments together, smooth the asperities and hand down to posterity the finished epic of the Celtic world, superior, perhaps, to the Iliad or the Odyssey. What has come down to us is "a sort of patchwork epic," as Prescott called the Ballads of the Cid, a popular epopee in all its native roughness, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... fault the cabs weren't waiting any more and people didn't talk about how pretty I was? And was it my fault when he finally had me alone, and just because no one else wanted me, he got tired and threw me flat—cold flat [Brings hand down on table.]—and I'd been on the dead level with him! [With almost a sob, crosses up to bureau, powders nose, comes down back of table.] It almost broke my heart. Then I made up my mind to get even and get all I could out of the ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... the shore now, for the wave-crests are dancing white before the land-breeze, high above the boat's side. The boat seems strangely empty. Two men are pulling instead of six! And what is this lying heavy across his chest? He pushes, and is answered by a groan. He puts his hand down to rise, and is answered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... is a stout man-at-arms,' said Saxon, passing his hand down my arm.' He hath thew and sinew, and can use proud words too upon occasion, as I have good cause to know, even in our short acquaintance. Might it not be that he too ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... has, like all other influences, "the defects of its virtues," as the French say. It has no gifts of prophecy, and in the process of handing down to successive generations those mechanisms and powers which have been found useful in the long, stern struggle of the past, it will also hand down some which, by reason of changes in the environment, are not only no longer useful, but even injurious. As the new light of biology has been turned on the human body and its diseases, it has revealed so many ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson


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