whip hand

English

Alternative forms

  • whip-hand

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Noun

whip hand (plural whip hands)

  1. The hand in which a horse rider holds the whip.
  2. (idiomatic) An advantage over another; the dominant position.
    • 1876, Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister‎[1], page 271:
      Of course I was a fool. My father has the whip hand of me, because he has money and I have none, and it was simply kicking against the pricks to speak as I did.
    • 1895, L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, page 152:
      Even the purest of all the Lamaist sects—the Ge-lug-pa—are thorough-paced devil-worshippers, and value Buddhism chiefly because it gives them the whip-hand over the devils.
    • 1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 6:
      Mrs. Cavendish, however, was a lady who liked to make her own plans, and expected other people to fall in with them, and in this case she certainly had the whip hand, namely: the purse strings.
    • 2014, Phillip Inman, As UK economy recovers, employers remain reluctant to increase wages, The Guardian:
      Few workers are unionised, and in the UK's increasingly flexible labour market, where it is almost impossible to quit a job and claim unemployment benefits, where zero hour contracts are still a feature and where self-employment is on the rise, employers have the whip hand.
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