- 1
A hand-me-down is a piece of clothing that someone has already worn, then given to another person — often an older or sister growing out of it and passing it to a younger one. Toys and books can be hand-me-downs too. It is not the same as buying used clothes in a shop; the feeling is “this was passed to me,” usually inside a family. People also use it as an adjective: hand-me-down jeans. It can sound warm, or a little sad if you never get anything new. The phrase is built from hand down, meaning to pass something on, with me in the middle: it is handed down to me.
傳下來的舊衣（多半是兄姊穿過的，不是店裡買的二手衣）
組成From the verb hand down (pass something to someone younger or next in line), with me in the middle.
同家族的字
- hand downthe verb this is built from: to pass something on to another person
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
hand-me-downnoun
- 1
An item that is passed along for someone else to use.
- Well, I'm willing, I'm able, I'm practically much alive / Well, I'm six-feet-tall, I ain't no hand-me-down
- But these routes have always had hand-me-downs that aren't really designed for the job.
- 2
A piece of clothing or other item which has been outgrown by an older sibling and passed down to a younger one.
hand-me-downadj
- 1
Used or second-hand, passed along by its prior user.
- And what costume shall the poor girl wear / To all tomorrow's parties? / A hand-me-down dress from who knows where
- 1983, 19th of March, Presidential Radio Address by Ronald Reagan I don't want America's recovery and security to be sacrificed on an altar of discredited hand-me-down theories. And if you'll help us, they won't be.
hand-me-downverb
- 1
rareTo pass along to someone else.
- “See into life, don’t just look at it” is her [Anne Baxter’s] creditable credo, hand-me-downed from her famous architect grandfather, the late Frank Lloyd Wright.
- The carpet was a montage of fade and unfade indicating that when new it had been used in another office—probably Mr. Barlowe’s—and then hand-me-downed when the decorators had cut loose.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。