Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A woman's purse.
  • noun A piece of small hand luggage.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • A bag for small articles, carried in the hand in traveling or shopping.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun a small bag usually made of cloth, leather or a similar imitation material, and often having a strap to permit carrying it by slinging it over a shoulder, used by women to carry money and small personal items or accessories.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small bag used by women (or sometimes by men) for carrying various small personal items.
  • noun uncountable An anthemic subgenre of house music of the late 1980s, often with booming vocals.
  • verb UK (transitive, humorous) Figuratively, to hit with a handbag; to attack verbally or subject to criticism (used originally of Margaret Thatcher).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a container used for carrying money and small personal items or accessories (especially by women)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

hand +‎ bag. The music genre is named from women dancing around a pile of their handbags in nightclubs.

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Examples

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  • see also brick

    July 20, 2007