Can you raise only one eyebrow?

[M'Sharak]

Lulz. Is it a common second meaning in English? It's absent in Italian.

In my experience, "ambidextrous" means "equally adept with both hands" or at least signifies much less of the dominance of one hand over the other that you'd expect to find in a right- or left-handed person. While it's easy enough to see it also being used as a sly euphemism for "bisexual," I don't recall ever seeing "ambidextrous" used to mean deceitful, devious, dishonest, hypocritical or anything of that sort. I suspect that those more pejorative meanings haven't been in general English usage for three or four centuries.

Nonetheless, I did find sort of amusing the last sentence of this bit from the Wiki entry:

The word "ambidextrous" is derived from the Latin roots ambi-, meaning "both", and dexter, meaning "right" or favourable. Thus, "ambidextrous" is literally "both right" or "both favourable". The term ambidexter in English was originally used in a legal sense of jurors who accepted bribes from both parties for their verdict.[2]

Stuff like that is what can make digging into word histories so much fun.

 

[Deckerd]

Lulz. Is it a common second meaning in English? It's absent in Italian.

Did you mean synonym or antonym?

 

[iguana_tonante]

I was asking for antonyms (since I'm the opposite of ambidextrous), and M'Sharak linked to a thesaurus that reported a second meaning for ambidextrous as "insincere" with some synonyms (deceitful, deceptive, disingenuous, double-dealing, hypocritical, left-handed) and antonyms (forthright, honest, truthful). Since I never encountered this second meaning and it's absent in Italian, I was asking if it was relatively common in English (apparently, it isn't).

 

[Deckerd]

No it's not common. The antonym is single handed or right or left handed.

 

[Tiberius]

That's odd, isn't it? That ambidextrous has no simple word for the opposite.

I propose Unichiral for single-handedness. For right handedness, just plain simple "Dextral" (from dexter, Latin for right) and "Sinistral" for left handedness, from the latin Sinister for left.

See HERE.

 

[Deckerd]

That's odd, isn't it? That ambidextrous has no simple word for the opposite.

I propose Unichiral for single-handedness. For right handedness, just plain simple "Dextral" (from dexter, Latin for right) and "Sinistral" for left handedness, from the latin Sinister for left.

Single, right and left handed ARE simple words. Ambidextrous is not.

 

[Holdfast]

Nonetheless, I did find sort of amusing the last sentence of this bit from the Wiki entry:

The word "ambidextrous" is derived from the Latin roots ambi-, meaning "both", and dexter, meaning "right" or favourable. Thus, "ambidextrous" is literally "both right" or "both favourable". The term ambidexter in English was originally used in a legal sense of jurors who accepted bribes from both parties for their verdict.[2]

Fantastic little nugget of knowledge; that's going straight into the memory bank.

Thanks for looking it up.

 

[Dr. Chandra]

I can raise my left eyebrow on its own, but only my left.

Me, too, except I can only raise my right eybrow. Hmmm.

 

[Tiberius]

That's odd, isn't it? That ambidextrous has no simple word for the opposite.

I propose Unichiral for single-handedness. For right handedness, just plain simple "Dextral" (from dexter, Latin for right) and "Sinistral" for left handedness, from the latin Sinister for left.

Single, right and left handed ARE simple words. Ambidextrous is not.

I meant that right-handed is a compound word.

 

[T'Preea]

I can lift my right eyebrow, just not super high.

 

[Mary Ann]

I'm left-handed and can write with my right hand in an emergency, but that handwriting is even worse than my left-handed writing. However I use my right hand for many other tasks, such as dialling on a phone. I'm the youngest of four children and the only left-hander, so I wonder if I learned to use my right hand for many tasks because that's what I saw my brothers do. I only write with my left hand, and also use just my left hand for crocheting and when using knives, but for the rest I'm comfortable using either hand. As an aside, I'm unable to use left-handed scissors because I've only ever used right-handed ones. It never entered my mother's mind to buy me left-handed kiddie scissors, because when she was a child the priests and nuns literally smacked the left-handedness out of kids, so she didn't even know such scissors existed.

 

[Deckerd]

Here's a poser for you. Both Him Indoors and his best mate are right handed but when they deal cards, they deal with their left hand.

 

[Starkers]

That's odd. Is it some underhand form of cheating?

I wear my wristwatch on my right wrist not my left, despite being right handed, but that's down to when I went into hopsital as a teenager, they had to put a drip in my left arm so I switched it and it felt right so I've work a watch there ever since...

Plus I imagine it would confuse ninjas into thinking I'm left handed...

 

[ITL]

Here's a poser for you. Both Him Indoors and his best mate are right handed but when they deal cards, they deal with their left hand.

Clearly demons.

I wear my wristwatch on my right wrist not my left, despite being right handed, but that's down to when I went into hopsital as a teenager, they had to put a drip in my left arm so I switched it and it felt right so I've work a watch there ever since...

Plus I imagine it would confuse ninjas into thinking I'm left handed...

If you hear a "huh?" coming from a seemingly empty patch of nothing, you might be on to something.

 

[Starkers]

So that's what that is!

 

[Mooch]

I cannot lift only one eyebrow. It is very disappointing.

 

[cooleddie74]

I'm right handed but when I strum guitar (I'm not very good at all) I play with my left with my right fingers on the neck and frets. It's just the way I've practiced and messed around with guitars since I was a child and one of the very few things I ever do left-handed.