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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hand-held
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a hand-held calculator (=a small one that you hold in your hand)
▪ The calculations can be done using a hand-held calculator.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
camera
▪ First perhaps, try taking the photograph with a hand-held camera.
▪ A hand-held camera shakily follows him.
▪ Unlike most of the other sequences, they were not shot with a mobile hand-held camera, but on a tripod.
▪ Photographs are usually oblique and taken by hand-held cameras.
computer
▪ Austere, minimalist place where the waiters take your orders on hand-held computers.
▪ The hand-held computers zapped information from Marine observers to headquarters within seconds.
▪ Software, a Mountain View maker of handwriting software used in hand-held computers.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a hand-held video game
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A hand-held camera shakily follows him.
▪ And with its colour graphics screen is the most wanted hand-held machine you can get.
▪ Covert video cameras and hand-held laser devices will be among the equipment used at weekends, they warn.
▪ New hand-held bags are introduced this season, double handled or single, with or without shoulder straps.
▪ Polls show a distinct majority of New Yorkers share Pataki's view and support the ban on hand-held phones.
▪ Software, a Mountain View maker of handwriting software used in hand-held computers.
▪ The hunter-killer team was equipped with hand-held Apple Newton computers, linked via a small radio to headquarters.
Wiktionary
hand-held

a. 1 Held in one or both hands. 2 small and light enough to be operated while held in one or both hands. n. (context computing English) A personal digital assistant or video game console that is small enough to be held in the hands.

WordNet
hand-held

adj. small and light enough to be operated while you hold it in your hands; "a hand-held computer" [syn: handheld]

Usage examples of "hand-held".

She studied the warrants for a moment, then slid the hand-held back to Solar, who waved it at her.

The mob lunged at her with microphones, hand-held tape recorders, cameras.

Of course, this difference is so small that it could be detected only through a measurement whose accuracy is well beyond the capacity of hand-held stopwatches run by the press of a finger, Olympic-quality timing systems, or even the most precisely engineered atomic clocks.

Hunched in front of his own computer display screen in the workshop/office he had made out of the apartment the Bunkers were paying for, Carl traced out the circuitry for an improved Cyberbook model that would reduce the costs of the hand-held reader by at least ten percent.

He took a hand-held cyberlit off a table, where it rested beside a small meteorite full of metallic glints, and started it.

Flashlight was the F4 that would illuminate the target with the laser designators Actually there were two F-4's, both carrying hand-held laser designators.

While the base stations cranked out about five hundred watts, the mobile stations were allowed less than seven, and the battery-powered hand-held sets that everyone likes to use were three hundred milliwatts, and even with a huge parabolic dish receiving antenna, the signals gathered were like whispers.

They are only tools to him, not treasured pets, and the attention he gives them is like the 3-In-One oil with which he occasionally lubricates his power drill, hand-held belt sander, and chain saw.

Inside the lifeboat, she found the grey plastic flare container, twisted the thick red plastic top off, and rummaged through the big smoke-canisters and the hand-held flares until she found what she was looking for.

Not yet sixteen, and so not yet in possession of the canary-yellow birthday convertible, Verrie Myers strained her sensitive relationship with Ken Fischer by hinting she'd be willing to date other boys, with cars, if he wouldn't drive her past the Erie County Detention Center at least once a week, after dark, so that Verrie could flash the car headlights as they approached the grim building, eliciting from its interior, not always or clearly, an answering sequence of flashes like Morse code, what was probably a hand-held mirror inside one of the barred windows.

He stuffed the two-meter hand-held into his backpack along with the canned food, slung it into position, and donned his buckskin gloves.

They were, it appeared, going to incorporate a lot of cinema verite, with Conrad humping around a hand-held Arriflex to film life as it was lived.

Curt Johnson, the Director of FEMA, Dean Hull, the Attorney General, Ross Sessions, the Director of the FBI and Admiral Tom Gwinn, the Commandant over the Coast Guard were all receiving similar up-to-date information via similar receivers, or by wireless hand-held devices.

Crop dusters, mosquito abatement trucks, larvicide in the sewers and storm drains, even a hundred crews with hand-held foggers and backpack sprayers working their way through the city, street by street, could hardly make a dent until the cold weather arrived.

The applicator is a simple hand-held instrument which delivers sound from magnetic tapes.