handful

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (3)  · 
“
Despite the overwhelming popularity of "The" bands, only a handful were able to stand tall above their short name.

View all »
Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun The amount that a hand can hold.
  2. noun A small, undefined number or quantity: only a handful of people on the street.
  3. noun Informal One that is difficult to control or handle: The hyperactive toddler is a real handful.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Glancing through it superficially, it seemed that all but a handful were accounted for at the crucial time. —  Common Murder—Val McDermid - Lindsay Gordon 02
  • The report points out the bitter fact that PAF only has about three dozen truly world-class fighter planes - F-16 Fighting Falcons - and of them, only a handful are the latest block-52 fighters. —  Opinion Source: Delivering summaries of editorial and op-ed pieces from major papers by email.
  • 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
  • I can name a handful of women I know personally who have experienced this.
  • About one-third of those cars are IMCA (cars with a few more restrictions) and the other handful are the cars he runs against on the USMTS circuit.
More examples »
 

Tags

handful hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 180 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Middle English handful, hondful, from Anglo-Saxon handfull (= German handvoll = Icelandic handfyllr = Danish haandfuld), from hand, hand, + full, full: see -ful.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈhændfəl/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a day.

Recently looked up

Whizzer · interbreeding · scratch · underneath · PUD

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

ultimatum · pew · deadpool · sad panda · nom nom nom