hand-me-down
- noun
- /ˈhændmiˌdaʊn/
- I often wear my sister's hand-me-down clothes, which save me money and have sentimental value.
- hand-me-down clothes
- hand-me-down dress
- wore hand-me-downs
Yeah, you, you gotta wear hand me downs from your brother, right?
- Yeah, you, you gotta wear hand me downs from your brother, right?
- And, you know, I wore hand me downs because I had three other brothers.
- So as I said, like this new baby is going to have a lot of Ottie hand me downs, but they have sent this.
- I was six years old and I'm going to elementary school and I've got like these hand me down clothes that we fucking got from the thrift store.
Examples
-
And, you know, I wore hand me downs because I had three other brothers.
-
Her clothes were hand-me-downs
-
As you know, I have three boys and therefore there are a lot of hand me downs and my boys grow so quickly.
-
We lived on, you know, food stamps and, and hand me down clothes and whatever we we got by.
-
I like it but he also knows the boots are hand me downs from the go off music video.
-
I pulled out a navy-blue dress, an old hand-me-down from my mother.
Fiction book (2000) -
"We don't even have hand-me-downs to give to a new baby," he continued.
Fiction book (1990) -
She gets all of the attention and all I ever get are her hand-me-downs.
-
The too-tight, perfect clothes lay folded in a drawer, and the boy wore hand-me-downs.
Fiction book (1997) -
Her plain, aproned dresses and organdy prayer caps were her sisters' hand-me-downs, sewn by their mother.
Fiction book (2002)
Synonyms
Owned before and then given or sold to another person
Antonyms
How Used
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Hand-me-down comes from the simple idea of passing something by hand ('by hand') and giving it down ('to the next person'). So a hand-me-down is a used item, often clothes, that one person gives to another, usually a younger family member.