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Pronunciation varies by accent · adjective
(idiomatic) Showing clear evidence of guilt; in the act of wrongdoing..
to catch red-handed
Caught, red-handed, on the spot, in the very act of aiding and abetting the traitors against the Republic of France, the Englishman could claim no protection from his own country.
Railway police are making a full investigation into the matter, and the headmasters of schools have been approached, but it is difficult in such cases to discover the culprits, unless they are caught red-handed.
Another Southerner argued that "commerce has no social illusions" and that it would be commerce that would rid the region of "this historic, red-handed, deformed, and swaggering villain."
Your husband is having sex with other women -- that's perfectly clear. Sometimes when cheaters are nabbed red-handed they react with anger, they "rage" in an attempt to make the person who caught 'em feel like they did something wrong.
Made sense she'd be nervous, right? Made sense that she'd jump like a red-handed pickpocket when her friend Danielle, whom she'd thought had zonked out the minute she'd buckled her seat belt ten minutes ago, threw out such an intimate topic of conversation.
The demon of fire followed close upon the heels of the unseen fiend of the earth's hidden caverns, and ran red-handed through the metropolis of the West, kindling a thousand unhurt buildings, while the horror-stricken people stood aghast in terror, as helpless to combat this new enemy as they were to check the ravages of the earthquake itself.
I grew to manhood listening to Greeks and Persians plotting various plots in my master's house, and one night all the plots burst forth into ugly blossoms and bore the fruit of red-handed war, and the Greek cities of Ionia revolted against the Persian overlords.
Use red-handed when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Red-handed means (idiomatic) Showing clear evidence of guilt; in the act of wrongdoing..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
to catch red-handed
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