Hand over fist

Hand over fist means quickly or rapidly as in ‘making money hand over fist’, and acquired this figurative meaning from the mid-19th century. The expression derives from the way sailors used to climb rope ladders or haul in ropes aboard ship during the late 18th/early 19th century. Long before this, the nautical expression was ‘hand over hand’ but by the late 18th/early 19th century it had been replaced with ‘hand over fist’.