red-handedness

• redhandedness

From red-handed +‎ -ness.

red-handedness (uncountable)

1. The condition of being caught with clear evidence of guilt.
   • 1966, John Maurice Kelly, Roman litigation, page 142:

     If we look at it in this way, the requirement of red-handedness sinks somewhat into the background, and the expression acquires a rather different nuance: furtum manifestum means a clearly-proven theft.

   • 2003, Christian M. Fletcher, The Chronicles of a Cynic, →ISBN, page 86:

     Don't ask me why, because there was no diminishment of my red-handedness when I threw the evidence to the floor.

   • 2012, Edmund Robert Kowkabany, Shards of Ephemera, →ISBN, page 414:

     After the farcical scenario of the cad being caught red-handed in the illusory lap of love, both lap and red-handedness being expertly assured, then his being wrenched away and whipped by the injured, hysterical spouse, who to the astound of all proved herself a latent harpy or she-devil in satin and lace, Tammy would cash in her chips and settle her account here, then off she goes, harking, obedient to the irresistible call of the wild, back to her chic haunts, opulent spas, casinos, playgrounds the world over.

2. Bloodiness; murderousness.
   • 1869, William Brighty Rands, Chaucer's England - Volume 1, page 55:

     The thing which seems least like what we now call England is the red-handedness of religious persecution, and the odd manner in which spiritual and secular personages jumble their functions and thwart each other on exactly the same principles, though on exactly opposite sides of the battle.

   • 1914, Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, page 169:

     War has been made splendid in all its red-handedness chiefly because it trains to teamwork and develops devotion to the group.

   • 1946, Frederick Clifton Grant, The Practice of Religion, page 120:

     But what constitutes the sinfulness of sin is not its enormity, its red-handedness and violence; what makes a sin something more than a crime is the fact that it affects our relation to God.

3. The condition of having red hands.
   • 1979, Pamela Stewart, Cascades, page 27:

     I must fable my own birth: Though you both were Very much in love under Boston's stars, Among the maples' red-handedness, Caught at the bottom of an October sky