- handyman (n.)
- also handy-man, "man employed to do various types of work," by 1843, from handy + man (n.). Gradually developed from the sense of "man who is capable at all sorts of work."
A handy man is so practised in the regulation of the little utilities of the house he inhabits, that by a slight touch here and there--a screw turned here and a screw loosened there, and a nail driven in time--he keeps all working smoothly, and averts those domestic catastrophes and break-downs of which Punch makes so much capital in his pictures. [Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Arthur's Home Magazine, August 1869]
