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Glite Dictionary
on someone's hands

on someone's hands

5.3
Having work or problems that you must deal with
  • idiom
translation icon : en manos de alguien
  • If you don't fix the leakage soon, you'll have a big mess on your hands.

Examples

  • After the storm, the town officials found they had a lot of cleanup on their hands.

  • Suddenly I got a teenager on my hands.

    Elektra (2005)

  • You have an awful lot of bad wine on your hands.

    Samantha Rose (2021)

  • You better start selling it before this song's over or you're gonna have a riot on your hands.

    Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

  • The manager realized he had a staffing shortage on his hands when two employees resigned.

Synonyms

on the hook
vson someone's hands
  • Informal
26 7.7

Responsible for paying or doing something, often unwillingly

is responsible to deal with something without implying payment
to hold the bag
vson someone's hands
  • Informal
11 8.8

End up responsible for the blame or a problem others avoid

is general responsibility rather than blame left by others

Antonyms

to free
238 1.8

To excuse someone from a duty or rule

How Responsible

responsible
973 2.4
on someone's hands
5.3

Surface Forms

on someone's hands main

Morphology

on + someone's + hands

The sense 'responsible or obliged to deal with' is a metaphorical extension of having something 'on one's hands' (hands as control/possession), so a learner who knows 'on' and 'hands' can plausibly guess a relation to having or holding something. However, the specific meaning of being stuck with responsibility is not strictly derivable from the literal parts and relies on conventional metaphorical usage (though similar motifs exist cross-linguistically), so it is only partially transparent.

Etymology

The phrase on someone's hands comes from the picture of having something on your hands, like a baby or a pile of papers you must hold and care for. So it means 'responsible' or 'having to deal with something'.