SECOND HAND • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Second hand

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/sˈɛkənd hænd/ Listen

noun

Second n.

1.

One who, or that which, follows, or comes after; one next and inferior in place, time, rank, importance, excellence, or power. "Man An angel's second, nor his second long."

2.

One who follows or attends another for his support and aid; a backer; an assistant; specifically, one who acts as another's aid in a duel. "Being sure enough of seconds after the first onset."

3.

Aid; assistance; help. (Obs.) "Give second, and my love Is everlasting thine."

4.

pl. An article of merchandise of a grade inferior to the best; esp., a coarse or inferior kind of flour.

5.

The sixtieth part of a minute of time or of a minute of space, that is, the second regular subdivision of the degree; as, sound moves about 1,140 English feet in a second; five minutes and ten seconds north of this place.

6.

In the duodecimal system of mensuration, the twelfth part of an inch or prime; a line. See Inch, and Prime, n., 8.

7.

(Mus.)

(a)

The interval between any tone and the tone which is represented on the degree of the staff next above it.

(b)

The second part in a concerted piece; often popularly applied to the alto.

8.

(Parliamentary Procedure) A motion in support of another motion which has been moved in a deliberative body; a motion without a second dies without discussion.

Second hand, the hand which marks the seconds on the dial of a watch or a clock.

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Etymology of 'Second hand'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books

... his distinguished contemporaries. As a writer he possessed a finished style, clear, measured, and stately, which carried his well-arranged narrative as on a full and steady stream; he was also cool and sagacious but, like Hume, he was apt to take his facts at second hand, and the vast additional material which has been in course of accumulation since his day has rendered the value of his work more and more literary, ...

— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... made that enemy an abstract incarnation of his tenets. A man, too, who knows that he formed his opinions originally by a genuine and intellectual process is but little aware of the undue energy those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. Persons who first acquired their ideas at second hand are more open to a knowledge of their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force which there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most ...

— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... his one outlook towards the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policy of 1802. I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of my story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards at second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be mistaken on any essential point. I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have become changed into what she was in later years. ...

— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every nation? And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing some new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at second hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the means of returning light for light while we have neither observatory nor observer upon our half of the globe and the earth revolves in perpetual ...

— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams

... the northern part of Europe and Flanders, which had become wealthy and powerful by their own industry, and a participation of the trade to India with the Italians, (though at second hand,) were on the decline, ...

— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

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