Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A street beggar.
Wiktionary
- n. One who panhandles; an urban beggar who typically stands on a street with an outstretched container in hand, begging for loose change.
- n. A bum.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a beggar who approaches strangers asking for money
Etymologies
- Obscure. Speculative. Panhandling always seems to involve a container for receiving loose change, so perhaps referring to a small, handled pan or to the container as the pan and the arm[s] holding it as the handle. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Does anyone know where the term panhandler comes from?”
“This fellow has been around for a long time - a gringo "panhandler" - I was amazed the first time I saw him and tried to find out more about him but failed.”
“I’d learnt the word panhandler from Zole the day before.”
The Great California Game
“And, while you're thinking, stop to think, also, that a 'panhandler' doesn't do his work with a knife.”
“Commuters saw a different kind of panhandler Monday as”
“The case was dismissed on the premise that calling a charitable organization a "panhandler" was not going to hurt its reputation or influence how it conducts its business.”
“Helping a homeless person become a better panhandler might do more harm than good.”
“• When I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, my ride was often interrupted by a panhandler who said he was an alien and needed money for space fuel to return to his home planet.”
“I told them he was a pointer/mix, but I thought it was downright odd, like asking a panhandler for directions without scrounging up a quarter for him.”
“But for awhile, until the right wing blogs started to hump it, he was avoiding it like a urine stained panhandler at a bus stop.”
Hillary And The Drug Flap: Does Her Campaign Want Issue To Go Away?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘panhandler’.
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Handy Words
List of words and phrases referring to the hand, hands, fist, or derivatives of the Latin manus, beginning with left-handed.
left-handed, double-fisted, fisticuffs, handy, right-handed, two-handed, manual, manumission, manuscript, manually, manustupration, manudiction and 164 more...
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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kewpid's Words
moleskine, araldite, dessicate, cellar door, grotesque, fallacy, vendetta, raindrop, panacea, ethereal, hircus, treppenwitz and 446 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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On The Streets
rag-picker, hobo, street-urchin, tramp, vagrant, jarkman, clapperdogeon, mendicant, pauper, mooch, vagabond, cadger and 36 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for panhandler.
Prolagus One of my favorite stores in NYC, a kitchenware store, is called "Broadway Panhandler". Only today I looked up the word. May 10, 2011