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View synonyms for hands-off

hands-off

[ handz-awf, -of ]

adjective

  1. characterized by nonintervention or noninterference:

    the new hands-off foreign policy.

  2. remote or unfriendly; estranging:

    a truculent, hands-off manner toward strangers.



hands-off

adjective

  1. (of a machine, device, etc) without need of manual operation
  2. denoting a policy, etc, of deliberate noninvolvement

    a hands-off strategy towards industry



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Word History and Origins

Origin of hands-off1

First recorded in 1860–65

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Idioms and Phrases

An order to stop touching or interfering with something, as in Hands off the cake, children! This idiom is also put as keep one's hands off , as in She knew she had to keep her hands off so he could learn to tie his shoes by himself . [Mid-1500s]

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Example Sentences

The slippery slope argument is a way of keeping the hands-off-the-Internet-entirely philosophy going.

For years, President Obama took a hands-off approach to Iraqi politics.

For the most part, the colonels and generals were hands-off and allowed us to do the job we were trained to do.

What do you think of a federal hands-off policy that defers to the states?

Team Obama had better hope its hands-off strategy for saving the two-state solution works.

Secretary Johnson had obviously adopted a hands-off policy on integration.

So far as foreign powers are concerned, we have laid down the principle of "Hands-off."

We interfered under a most questionable extension of the Monroe Doctrine, and asserted the principle of "Hands-off."

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tortuous

[tawr-choo-uhs ]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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