Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The amount that a hand can hold.
- noun A small, undefined number or quantity.
- noun Informal One that is difficult to control or handle.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun As much as the hand can grasp or contain.
- noun A unit of length equal to four inches; a hand.
- noun A small quantity or number; a little.
- noun As much as one can hold or manage; full employment.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun As much as the hand will grasp or contain.
- noun obsolete A hand's breadth; four inches.
- noun A small quantity or number.
- noun A person, task, or situation, which is the most that one can manage.
- noun [Obs.] to have one's hands full; to have all one can do.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun As much as the
hand will grasp or contain. - Joseph Addison - noun obsolete A hand's
breadth ; fourinches . - noun A small quantity, usually approximately equal to five, the number of fingers on a hand.
- noun Something which can only be
managed with difficulty.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quantity that can be held in the hand
- noun a small number or amount
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In the early 90s he dated the housemate of my then-boyfriend and it was quite bizarre when he told me, when refering to bosoms, that "more than a handful is a waste".
Dutch Courage? Roger Sutton 2008
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While professing unhappiness with what he called a handful of "mistakes," he held fast to his basic support of Bush's policies.
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"There is no word more shameful in the Israeli lexicon of violence than the word 'handful,' " wrote Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
NYT > Home Page By ETHAN BRONNER 2011
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That's why the IP address management vendor is looking to dispel what it calls a handful of myths around DNS and get people paying attention to the technology in 2009, despite economic worries.
ARN News 2009
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Weatherspoon's big plays were among the handful from a defense that has 10 starters back and was expected to be much improved.
USATODAY.com 2008
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Furthermore, that thin handful of shared beliefs that held the roof up -- imperialism, racism, antipathy to democracy, militarism, and authoritarianism -- was absolutely unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans; so you couldn't put any of that rigging out there where the voters might chance to see it.
Archive 2008-01-01 2008
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President Obama says he called a handful of troops this morning wishing them a merry Christmas.
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Aiming to minimize his risk, he called a handful of funds to find how many bonds in their portfolios were considered "distressed," with yields 10 percentage points above Treasurys.
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"I often give them to people," said Anice, taking a handful from the basket and offering them to her across the holly.
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Mission mech franchise ready to roll out, having delayed the title a handful of times.
GameSpot's News, Screenshots, Movies, Reviews, Previews, Downloads, and Features 2010
lampbane commented on the word handful
How much is a handful, anyway? Does it depend on the item in question? A handful of marbles is a larger quantity than a handful of books. Some items cannot be held in the hand at all - a car, a house, a planet - so does the word even exist for them? And what about non-physical items, like downloads or ideas? Maybe then a set number, like five?
April 2, 2009
gangerh commented on the word handful
You've got your hands full with this one, Lampbane.
April 2, 2009
yarb commented on the word handful
The quantity implied by a handful depends on the context, but it assumes a hand-size proportionate to the object in question. Cars and planets can be held in an imaginary hand, if not an actual or theoretical one. I feel the measure loses some of its relevance when used with non-physical items, as I imagine ideas, prayers &c slipping through the clenched fingers of the hand.
On the scale of a single person, I would say a handful is between four and a dozen. A handful of marbles is not necessarily more than a handful of books. On larger scales - a global or universal scale - a handful may be more, while still representing a similar proportion. For example we might speak of the galaxy containing a handful of earth-like planets, even if the actual number were 100.
April 2, 2009