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Reader question: Please explain “right hand man” in this sentence: Smith has served as the long-time special assistant to Davis and was basically his right-hand man. My comments: This settles one thing, for sure, that Davis is right handed. May be not (we’ll deal with that later). Smith being the right hand man means that Smith, as an assistant, is someone Davis cannot do without, just as one couldn’t do anything without one’s right hand. If one is right handed, that is. People who are right handed have their right hand as the good hand, as they say. Or the better hand. Or the working hand. I am right handed, for example, and in my case, I cannot use a pair of chopsticks properly with my left hand. I said Davis is right handed, and that’s taking it literally. He might be dexterous with both hands but that’s also beside the point here. The point is “right hand man” must have derived from the fact that most people are right handed. Hence they say that their assistants, who help them in every way, are their right handed men, likening them to their right hand. Which raises an obvious question, of course, what about the left hand? Well, yeah, quite obviously left-handed people are often left out in the cold when it comes to custom-molding and language-forming. Left-handed people, as we know now, are just as good as right handed people in performing household chores or playing sports. They might be even better in ping pong, badminton and tennis than their right-handed opponents. But as they are relatively small in number, they’re often neglected, as minority interests are often ignored in society at large. | 
