brawny and large, with connotations of being unintelligent, as one who is fit for digging ditches.
1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II, I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all.
2011, Sophie Hardach, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages, There was his cousin, Sivan, the once shy boy who had grown as bulky as his shovel-handed father and then some more, and had learned to use his body efficiently with the help of the local kick-boxing club.
2011, Richard Matheson, Steel: And Other Stories, “Foaming moonstruck octopus! Shovel-handed ape!†The blood-laced eyes of Ruthlen Beauson bagged gibbously behind their horn-rimmed lenses.
2011, Gordon Burn, Best and Edwards, They belonged to the shovel-handed goalkeeper whose size the first time he'd seen him had made him bolt for home, the Ulsterman and Munich survivor Harry Gregg.
