light-handed

1. Gentle; benign and with minimal intervention.
2. Sparing; applying only slight pressure or minimal amounts.
3. Delicate and skilled; nimble and dextrous
4. Light-hearted; fun and witty or easygoing.
5. flippant; lacking seriousness.
6. (nautical or military) Not having a full complement of workers.
7. Thieving, larcenous.
   • 1822, [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in The Pirate. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, Edinburgh: Printed [by James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., OCLC 779274973 ↗, page 68 ↗:

     Indeed, she knew how to make young Deelbelicket, old Dougald Baresword, the Laird of Bandybrawl, and others, pay for the hospitality which she did not think proper to deny them, by rendering them useful in her negociations with the light-handed lads beyond the Cairn, who, finding their late object of plunder was allied to "kend folks, and owned by them at kirk and market," became satisfied, on a moderate yearly composition, to desist from their depredations.

8. (food) Fresh and light-tasting, not rich, heavy, or highly seasoned.
9. (obsolete) Having or requiring little strength.

light-handed

1. Carrying very little.
2. In a light-handed manner.
   • 1882, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Golden Echo”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, OCLC 5093462 ↗, page 57 ↗:

     See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair / Is, hair of the head, numbered. / Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould / Will have waked and have waxed and have walked in the wind what while we slept, {{...}