HANDFUL • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Handful

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/hˈændfˌʊl/ Listen

noun

handful n. (pl. handfuls)

As much as the hand will grasp or contain.

A hand's breadth; four inches. (Obs.) "Knap the tongs together about a handful from the bottom."

A small quantity or number. "This handful of men were tied to very hard duty."

A person, task, or situation, which is the most that one can manage; as, my two-year-old is a handful.

To have one's handful, to have one's hands full; to have all one can do. (Obs.) "They had their handful to defend themselves from firing."

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Etymology of 'Handful'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books

... for no more, but ran out of the greenhouse to David's great surprise, and presently came hurrying back with a handful ...

— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... himself reared (Polyporus avellanus), is procured by singeing, over a handful of straw, a block of the cob-nut tree, which is then watered and put by. In about a month the fungi make their appearance, and are quite white, of from two to three inches in diameter, and excellent to eat, while their ...

— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... that same anxious look suddenly revived in his face, went below into the kitchen, mounted a chair, took down an old broken tea-cup from the top shelf, and poured out into his wrinkled palm a handful of small silver coin—his entire collection of tips, and all the money he had. This he carried to the colonel, with a lie in his mouth that the recording angel blotted out the moment it ...

— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the opalescent whites of his eyes forming rings around his irides. Then, grasping the fact that it was done as a joke, he burst into a loud guffaw, slapped his thighs and cried, "Bunyip— bunyip!" bounding away the next moment, for Bostock sent a handful of water ...

— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... In the 'fifties it fell to a native of Ningpo, where I then lived. His good luck was announced to his wife by the magistrate in person, who conducted her to the six gates, at each of which she scattered a handful of rice, as an omen of good fortune. In the 'sixties, when I had removed to Peking, this honor was for the first time conferred on a Manchu, a son of the General Saishanga. His daughter was deemed a fit consort for the heir to the throne, ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

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