on the one hand

idiom

variants or on one hand

—used to introduce a statement that is followed by another contrasting statement which is typically introduced with on the other hand

On the one hand, I think the price is fair, but on the other hand, I really can't afford to spend that much money.

On one hand, there is the historical, real person—George Washington the President—but on the other hand, there is the legendary person—George Washington the cherry-tree chopper.

—Anthony Hollingsworth

Examples of on the one hand in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Europe’s green manufacturers face the lure of attractive US subsidies on the one hand and competition from cheap Chinese products on the other. —John Ainger, Fortune Europe, 2 Apr. 2024

First, both narratives targeted a common villain: the Democratic Party, accused of welcoming the pope’s Irish Catholic foot soldiers, on the one hand, and enforcing the Slave Power’s anti-democratic rule on the other. —Jon Grinspan, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Apr. 2024

Talk is retiring, but it’s being replaced by something that’s very similar to Talk on the one hand, but very different on another. —Jake Silverstein Photograph By Mamadi Doumbouya, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2024

The proliferation of marketing solutions related to data collection, processing and reporting, on the one hand, helps marketers understand users and customers better. —Jenya Edelberg, Forbes, 29 Feb. 2024

One episode shows us the events of the series so far from another perspective, which on the one hand helps provide clarity to what Jo is experiencing, but on the other hand feels like padding, because many of its points have been made multiple times already. —Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 20 Feb. 2024

The non-profit think tank discovered more positive ratings of current business conditions and job availability, on the one hand, and less pessimistic views of business, the labor market, and personal income prospects, on the other, looking out over the next six months. —Will Daniel, Fortune, 19 Jan. 2024

It is meant on the one hand to achieve a high level of realism and on the other to echo the romanticism of the pre-revisionist World War II films that producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman would have grown up watching rerun on television. —Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 25 Jan. 2024

Brittle, impossible perfection on the one hand; apocalypse on the other. —Zadie Smith, The New Yorker, 20 Nov. 2023