evenhanded
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of evenhanded
Explanation
Evenhanded means fair to all sides. If your essay is evenhanded, it should look at both sides of an argument, without showing preference for one side or the other. When you talk about two opposing ideas, you often invoke the idea of hands. “On the one hand,” you begin, discussing the first idea, and then move on to discuss its opposite, starting in with, “On the other hand.” Evenhanded means treating both “hands” evenly. Of course, you're not really talking about hands — you're talking about sides of an arguments, or siblings splitting a cookie.
Vocabulary lists containing evenhanded
Nothing But the Truth
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Vocabulary Video Contest (2013) - List 1
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2014 Vocabulary Video Contest (A-L)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
What “The Wolf War” also does—and a lot of nonfiction TV doesn’t—is approach its subject in an honestly evenhanded, objective manner.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 16, 2025
Although tensions on the Middle East have ebbed and flowed, the successful Camp David negotiation won acclaim among Israelis and Arabs alike, who praised it as an evenhanded approach from the U.S.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 9, 2025
Its approach is evenhanded and cautiously admiring to the point of pedestrian flatness.
From Salon • Jan. 29, 2024
It’s a nice idea that an evenhanded, old-fashioned exchange of ideas will yield a clear philosophical winner, clarify political strategy, or produce new ideas for solving the myriad problems we have—democratic deliberation made easy.
From Slate • Jan. 11, 2024
But the law is evenhanded; it levies an equal succession-tax on the transmission of badness as of goodness.
From Applied Eugenics by Popenoe, Paul
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.
