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• hands-off
  hands-off

  adjective

  characterized by nonintervention or noninterference.
• hands off
  hands off

  An order to stop touching or interfering with something, as in Hands off the cake, children! This idiom is also put as keep one's hands off, as in She knew she had to keep her hands off so he could learn to tie his shoes by himself. [Mid-1500s]

hands-off

American  

[handz-awf, -of] / ˈhændzˈɔf, -ˈɒf /

adjective

1. characterized by nonintervention or noninterference.

   the new hands-off foreign policy.

2. remote or unfriendly; estranging.

   a truculent, hands-off manner toward strangers.

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hands-off British  

adjective

1. (of a machine, device, etc) without need of manual operation

2. denoting a policy, etc, of deliberate noninvolvement

   a hands-off strategy towards industry

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hands off Idioms  

1. An order to stop touching or interfering with something, as in Hands off the cake, children! This idiom is also put as keep one's hands off, as in She knew she had to keep her hands off so he could learn to tie his shoes by himself. [Mid-1500s]

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Etymology

Origin of hands-off

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

The move to restrict CAISI’s activity is the latest example of how powerful models such as Mythos have thrown the administration’s hands-off AI strategy into disarray.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 9, 2026

Bowman, a former community banker and state bank commissioner who generally favors a more hands-off approach to supervision, said certain post-2008-09 financial crisis banking restrictions led to private credit expanding outside of banking.

From Barron's • Jun. 4, 2026

One conversion in Hemel Hempstead is a "fully hands-off investment with guaranteed income and no ongoing headaches", he says.

From BBC • May 20, 2026

Other than providing contact information for the people on his list, Milgrom says the estate was hands-off throughout the process.

From Los Angeles Times • May 19, 2026

By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, landlords in central and Southern China had an almost completely hands-off relationship with their tenants: they would collect a fixed rent and let farmers go about their business.

From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell