Underhanded describes conduct that is secret, sly, and dishonest. When someone achieves a goal through trickery or concealment rather than open effort, their method is underhanded. The word shows up in business, politics, sports, and ordinary conversation whenever someone wants to call out deception that was deliberately kept out of sight.
What underhanded means
The core meaning of underhanded is "done in a stealthy, dishonest way, especially to gain an advantage." Merriam-Webster defines it as "marked by secrecy, chicanery, and deception." It covers a wide range of behavior: a manager who takes credit for a colleague's work, a negotiator who withholds key facts, a player who bends the rules when the referee isn't looking.
The word functions as an adjective. It modifies nouns directly: an underhanded scheme, an underhanded tactic, an underhanded remark. It doesn't describe simple dishonesty. The sneakiness matters. A straightforward lie isn't underhanded. A lie crafted to go undetected while serving the liar's interests is.
There's also a literal, physical sense. In softball and certain throwing sports, "underhanded" (or "underhand") describes a motion where the hand moves below the wrist during the throw. Most uses of underhanded in modern English carry the figurative meaning, though the physical one hasn't disappeared.
Origins and etymology
Underhanded entered English in the early 17th century. Its root is the phrase "under hand," which originally meant "in secret" or "by private means." The hand was once a common stand-in for agency or control, so acting "under hand" meant acting outside the visible reach of authority. That secretive quality is exactly what the modern word preserves.
The adjective form solidified over the following two centuries. By the 19th century, underhanded was a standard term for shady business dealings, and it's retained that meaning since.
How to use underhanded in a sentence
Underhanded always modifies something: a person, an action, or a method. These examples show it in different contexts:
- "The company used underhanded tactics to poach clients from its competitor."
- "She suspected an underhanded deal had been struck before the vote."
- "His rise to the top was built on a series of underhanded moves that nobody could quite prove."
Notice that each sentence pairs underhanded with a degree of concealment. The deception isn't announced. That's the word doing its specific job.
It's also common with the verb "to be": "That was underhanded." Here it describes a completed action rather than modifying a noun, but the meaning holds.
Underhanded vs similar words
Several words sit close to underhanded in meaning, but they're not always interchangeable.
Devious suggests a winding, indirect path to a goal. A devious person plans carefully and routes around obstacles. Underhanded is narrower: it specifically implies that the method was hidden from the people affected by it.
Deceitful focuses on the act of deceiving. It doesn't carry the stealth element underhanded does. You can be openly deceitful; you can't really be openly underhanded, since the concealment is built into the definition.
Sneaky is the informal cousin. It shares the secrecy element, but sneaky sounds more casual and is often used for minor infractions. Underhanded tends to imply a more serious breach of trust or ethics.
Nefarious goes further. Something nefarious is outright wicked or criminal. Underhanded doesn't necessarily reach that level. A mildly dishonest negotiating tactic might be underhanded without being nefarious.
Words that pair well with underhanded
In practice, underhanded appears most often with a short list of companion nouns: tactics, methods, means, dealings, behavior, scheme, and plot. These pairings reflect the word's natural habitat: situations where someone is trying to win or gain something through concealed dishonesty.
Adverbs don't pair with underhanded the way they might with a verb. You wouldn't write "very underhanded" in formal prose. If you need to intensify it, restructure: "a particularly underhanded scheme" works better than stacking adverbs.
Common mistakes with underhanded
The most frequent mistake is using underhanded when the behavior wasn't actually hidden. If someone is openly rude or straightforwardly dishonest, underhanded doesn't fit. Save it for situations where the deception was designed not to be seen.
Writers sometimes confuse underhanded with dissembling, which describes hiding one's real feelings or intentions behind a false appearance. The two words overlap but aren't identical. Dissembling is about concealing internal states. Underhanded is about concealing the methods or motives behind an action.
A second mistake: treating underhanded as a verb. "He underhanded the deal" isn't standard English. The word works as an adjective only in its figurative sense.
Register and tone
Underhanded sits comfortably in formal and informal registers. Journalists use it to describe corporate misconduct. Politicians reach for it when accusing rivals of unfair play. Friends use it to describe a colleague who stole someone else's idea in a meeting. It's not a slang term, but it's not stiff academic language either. It fits most contexts where someone wants to name deceit that was deliberately kept quiet.
The word carries a clear moral charge. Calling something underhanded isn't neutral. It's an accusation. Use it when you mean it.