How to Use hand-to-hand in a Sentence

hand-to-hand

1 of 2 adjective
  • The weed making its way from hand-to-hand is potent.
    — Josh Crutchmer, Rolling Stone, 28 Aug. 2025
  • There is hand-to-hand combat in this show as well as gunshots and gore.
    — Eric E. Harrison, arkansasonline.com, 27 July 2024
  • The first weapons devised by man were designed for hand-to-hand combat.
    — Rabbi Moishe Kievman, Sun Sentinel, 9 May 2025
  • Statham has a hand-to-hand fight with the Rock and a hand-to-hand fight with Diesel.
    — Derek Lawrence, EW.com, 6 Sep. 2024
  • Press coverage is a hand-to-hand combat game at the line of scrimmage.
    — Joseph Hoyt, Dallas Morning News, 18 Mar. 2026
  • There’s a bit of bloody, hand-to-hand battle and some killing, though thankfully not of our boys.
    — Kimberly Roots, TVLine, 10 Oct. 2025
  • This was a problem on the first day because the district requires a hand-to-hand drop-off.
    — Krista Johnson, The Courier-Journal, 15 Aug. 2023
  • But disguise doesn’t work so well up close, and at the time, combat was mostly a hand-to-hand affair.
    — Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 9 Sep. 2024
  • Davis is seen escaping the attack and fighting in hand-to-hand combat.
    — Abigail Lee, Variety, 12 Feb. 2025
  • One of Williams’s co-defendants has been accused of a hand-to-hand drug swap in full view of judge.
    — Herb Scribner, Washington Post, 18 Apr. 2024
  • Secondly, these games offer so much more than hand-to-hand martial arts action.
    — Gene Park, Washington Post, 2 Feb. 2024
  • Batman and his rogues' gallery are more focused on hand-to-hand combat and gimmicks like laughing gas.
    — Christian Holub, EW.com, 11 Dec. 2024
  • My experience with more fight sequences isn’t hand-to-hand fighting.
    — Jackie Strause, The Hollywood Reporter, 12 May 2023
  • Fights also include hand-to-hand combat, weaponry and sorcery.
    — Common Sense Media, Washington Post, 9 Feb. 2024
  • In each video, the suspect is immobilized and on the ground without hand-to-hand combat or the use of a firearm.
    — Chris Eberhart, Fox News, 12 Mar. 2024
  • One standout sequence features a slippery hand-to-hand combat scene among wriggling eels.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 24 Apr. 2025
  • There is a weird intimacy to hand-to-hand combat and the brutality of it.
    — Rachel Raposas, PEOPLE, 24 June 2026
  • John has some solid brawls with the Covenant, including one hand-to-hand knife battle with an Elite.
    — Paul Tassi, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2024
  • Glass is not afraid of lingering on an open wound or dragging out hand-to-hand combat to the most gruesome conclusions.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 12 Mar. 2024
  • Sunday, though, will bring sheer hand-to-hand, Elliss-on-Elliss combat.
    — Luca Evans, Denver Post, 23 Jan. 2026
  • There are explosions, weapons, frequent references to death, and hand-to-hand combat.
    — Elisabeth Sherman, Parents, 7 Oct. 2025
  • Sawayama learned archery, knife-fighting and hand-to-hand combat for her kickass scenes, which were shot entirely at night over five weeks.
    — Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 26 Mar. 2023
  • The hand-to-hand combat between rioters and police was among the most violent moments of the day.
    — Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 17 June 2024
  • People are injured or die via explosions, poison, shooting, snake bites, hand-to-hand combat with weapons and more.
    — Common Sense Media, Washington Post, 17 Nov. 2023
  • But there were also perplexing moments that punctured the gravitas of the event (even for an event built around hand-to-hand combat).
    — Alex Weprin, HollywoodReporter, 15 June 2026
  • After some hand-to-hand combat, Juliette is cornered by three people in total, all of whom appear to be quite young.
    — Noel Murray, Vulture, 3 Jan. 2025
  • The fighting is so close-quartered that hand-to-hand combat is not uncommon, Ukrainian soldiers say.
    — Peter Weber, The Week, 7 Mar. 2023
  • The director even goes as far as removing David Holmes’ score during the hand-to-hand combat scenes.
    — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 14 Mar. 2025
  • Then, after some intense hand-to-hand and lightsaber-to-knife combat, Mae flings a blade deep into Indara’s chest.
    — Noel Murray, Vulture, 4 June 2024
  • The training includes obstacle courses, hand-to-hand combat, and firearms training.
    — Billal Rahman, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 Oct. 2025

hand to hand

2 of 2 adverb
  • There, building projects don’t just transfer from hand to hand.
    — Serenity Gibbons, Forbes, 9 June 2022
  • The drawings, too, evolved, passing from hand to hand.
    — Justin Davidson, Curbed, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Novices begin with two balls and work to keep them in motion from hand to hand.
    — Dave Birkett, Detroit Free Press, 24 Mar. 2020
  • Sentinel-Stars were bought anxiously and passed from hand to hand.
    — Orlando Sentinel Staff, The Orlando Sentinel, 8 June 2026
  • The most magical thing is the way the books were passed from hand to hand amongst kids, and adults sort of didn’t know anything about it.
    — Staff and Wire Reports, USA TODAY, 25 Nov. 2021
  • The punishment should be delivered hand to hand, there should not be any delays and the cases should not go on for years.
    — Manveena Suri, CNN, 8 May 2018
  • Bitter black coffee, the drink of Iraqi mourning, passed quietly from hand to hand.
    — ABC News, 13 Apr. 2026
  • The fighting was brutal, hand to hand, and the British paratroopers were overrun.
    — National Geographic, 6 May 2020
  • The workers formed a line up the side of the rubble pile and passed the children from hand to hand down to the waiting ambulances.
    — Safak Timur, New York Times, 7 Feb. 2023
  • It’s forged with the intention of being passed from hand to hand, taken as plunder, given as a gift or handed down to heirs.
    — David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Nov. 2021
  • Swiftly pass the weight back and forth from hand to hand; doing this quickly will improve your ankle stability.
    — Lindsay Berra, Men's Health, 18 Jan. 2023
  • The painting passed from hand to hand, with Liber’s co-worker’s brother’s friend agreeing to deliver it.
    — Kate Dwyer, New York Times, 19 Dec. 2022
  • My mother’s cousins and neighbors joined us; trays, coffee, and bundles of cloth—used to lay couscous grains out to dry in the sun—were passed from hand to hand.
    — Boutheina Ben Salem, Vogue, 8 May 2026
  • The outdoor shoes are removed (Hanks makes sure to toss ’em lightly from hand to hand) and replaced by footwear more suited to the home.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 15 Nov. 2019
  • Once the dash was over, those hoplites who survived could fight hand to hand and press the advantage of better protection from their sturdier shields.
    — National Geographic, 6 Feb. 2020
  • In poker, each player has to act in the now and change plans and strategies from hand to hand, competition to competition and day to day.
    — Johan Hajji, Forbes, 30 Sep. 2021
  • In one makeshift port and then another there is splashing and disembarking and then cries and hugs as babies are gingerly passed from hand to hand.
    — Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2017
  • The cars face opposite directions, and the drivers do the transaction hand to hand, window to window.
    — Alaska Dispatch News, 25 Oct. 2017
  • Swings were delivered at random, baton passing from hand to hand in no particular order.
    — Lenora Chu, The Cut, 11 Oct. 2017
  • Finally, 38 hours after the collapse, the rescuers took the twins from Ibrahim and passed them hand to hand down the rubble.
    — Safak Timur Emin Ozmen, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2024
  • Sadly, after having gone from hand to hand and being protected that entire time, at this last moment the secret was revealed.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 16 June 2021
  • Electronic payment can also help a patient avoid ATM fees and touching cash that has been passed from hand to hand.
    — Bethany Rodgers, The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Sep. 2020
  • Coronavirus has fueled concerns about exchanging currency from hand to hand.
    — Washington Post, 1 Dec. 2020
  • The video captured multiple hand to hand transactions wherein Ozment was engaged in the sale of methamphetamine.
    — Carol Robinson | [email protected], al, 6 Sep. 2022
  • In the weight room, David drops into a plank pose and moves the length of an agility ladder, hand to hand, down and back, pausing only when Will cracks a joke.
    — Stephen J. Nesbitt, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2025
  • Cannonballs aside, combat — well-staged and performed, in the tradition of martial arts movies — is almost entirely hand to hand (or sword to sword).
    — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 31 Aug. 2023
  • Captain Taylor, therefore, determined to attack the Englishmen in open boats and board and capture her by a hand to hand fight.
    — Nancy Stearns Theiss, The Courier-Journal, 23 Dec. 2017
  • It is embedded in the pages of a magazine passed hand to hand, mother to daughter, generation to generation.
    — Shelby Stewart, Essence, 4 Aug. 2025
  • As the microphone passed from hand to hand, the words of our employees became increasingly personal and emotional.
    — Michelle Murphy, Quartz at Work, 24 July 2019
  • Dance historians are fond of proclaiming that dance, alone among the Western arts, is passed down hand to hand, like folk arts in traditional societies.
    — Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, 24 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hand-to-hand.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: