SECONDHAND • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Secondhand

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/sˈɛkəndhˌænd/ /sˈɛkənhˌænd/ Listen

Secondhand

adjective

Derived from what is primary or original; not firsthand. "A secondhand account of a memory of something once read" , "Most of our knowledge is secondhand"

Previously used or owned by another. Synonym: used.

adverb

By indirect means. "He prefers to buy secondhand"

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"Secondhand" Quotes from Famous Books

... to the Albany to breakfast with Fledgeby. Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain. ...

— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... which we dare not overlook, and that is, the hearty conscientiousness with which the writer does his work. He takes nothing at secondhand, but goes straightway to the authorities. It begets confidence in a writer, when he is enabled to say for himself, as the Professor apologetically does in his Preface, "It has been my aim to examine for myself every reported case which bore sufficiently upon the topic under consideration to warrant ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... luncheon. I picked up a London morning paper and glanced at the personal column. I have read it every day since when I could get hold of the London Times. All of human nature and the ups and downs of man are there, from secondhand lace to the mortgaged jewels of broken-down nobility, from sporting games and tickets for sale to relatives wanted, and those mysterious, suggestive, unsigned messages from home or to home. I read the news of the war. We in America did not know there was a war. But Greece and Crete were ...

— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... thereupon began to carry in two-by-four timbers and lay them where they wanted them on the ground inside the tent. Next they nailed boards across. They had bought all of this timber in Gridley secondhand at a bargain. ...

— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... also take the power. Instead of putting our thinking out, as we put our washing, let us do it at home. No man can do another's thinking for him. What is thought in the originator is only acquiescence in the man who takes it at secondhand. ...

— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

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