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What is "handful"

Crossword clues for handful

handful
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
handful
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
mere
▪ A classic power feature, often touted by its supporters, that will be used by a mere handful of people.
▪ They were a mere handful of men, hardly worth worrying about.
▪ A mere handful set up their own business.
small
▪ Proper buffet cars are economic on only a small handful of their routes, notably Waterloo-Bournemouth.
▪ Only a small handful of large investors spoke at the meeting, which was dominated by Conrail employees.
▪ The paracelsian mercurials represented one of the small handful of important therapeutic advances made before the present century.
▪ Cook noodles, a small handful at a time, in oil.
▪ She thought ruefully of the cigarette butt, and of Johnny's small handful of apple tree leaves.
▪ Prior to 1986 only a small handful of networks existed within the research and education community.
▪ And behold, he shrivelled and withered under their eyes, and became a small handful of grey dust and glass powder.
■ VERB
grab
▪ She bit the inside of his mouth, and grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked at it.
▪ I saw myself reaching into that mass and grabbing a big handful and squeezing.
▪ Sharpe grabbed a handful of his mare's mane to haul himself back upright.
▪ He had grabbed a handful of cartridges from his pocket, which contained both blank and live cartridges.
▪ Gordy put his hand in the water and grabbed a handful of it.
▪ Traffic screeched to a stop and dozens of people dashed to grab handfuls of notes swirling in the wind.
▪ Her free hand reached down through her lap to grab a sincere handful of my crotch.
pick
▪ Finally he picked up a handful of stones and every time he looked round and found her following, he threw one.
▪ Yoyo moaned as she picked up a handful of pieces.
▪ I also pick up small roadkills for Jack, or stop to pick a handful of wild strawberries for myself.
pull
▪ Susan pulled out handfuls of ectoplasm and threw them aside.
▪ The orangutan man reached into his pants and pulled out a handful of brochures.
▪ Dempster pulled out a handful of change and slammed it down.
throw
▪ She threw handfuls of Loulou's bath-salts into the hot water, then emptied the jar.
▪ When my father threw in the first handful of dirt, I heard the pebbles dance on the coffin lid.
▪ A little while later, still holding Maura in his arms, Michael threw his handful of dirt on to the coffin.
▪ There was a tapping noise at the shutters, as if some one had thrown a handful of pebbles against them.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
to name but a few/a handful/three etc
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ They played a handful of tunes from their new album.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As for Jimmy, he chooses from a handful of set comments, so he hasn't a great deal to say.
▪ Gradually, the number of individual objectors prepared to enter the fray began to expand outside the initial handful.
▪ Looking down where the water of the canal licked the rocks, I saw a handful of date pits.
▪ Prior to 1986 only a small handful of networks existed within the research and education community.
▪ She had three more falls before she and a handful of other players started stick and balling.
▪ Sports Illustrated for Kids asked a handful of athletes whether they had invented anything when they were kids.
▪ The new book is by a man who's already written a handful of best-sellers, most of them about moles.
▪ The trial is the first of a handful of high-profile cases expected within the next few months.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
handful

handful \hand"ful\ (h[a^]nd"f[.u]l), n.; pl. handfuls (h[a^]nd"f[.u]lz). [AS. handfull.]

  1. As much as the hand will grasp or contain.
    --Addison.

  2. A hand's breadth; four inches. [Obs.]

    Knap the tongs together about a handful from the bottom.
    --Bacon.

  3. A small quantity or number.

    This handful of men were tied to very hard duty.
    --Fuller.

  4. 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.
    --Sir. W. Raleigh.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
handful

Old English handful; see hand (n.) + -ful. Originally the quality that can be held in a hand; also a medieval linear measurement of four inches. Meaning "a small portion or part" is from c.1400. Figurative meaning "as much as one can manage" is from 1755.

Wiktionary
handful

n. 1 The amount that a hand will grasp or contain. 2 (context obsolete English) A hand's breadth; four inches. 3 A small quantity, usually approximately equal to five. 4 Something which can only be managed with difficulty.

Related phrases:
WordNet
handful

  1. n. a small number or amount; "only a handful of responses were received" [syn: smattering]

  2. the quantity that can be held in the hand [syn: fistful]

Usage examples of "handful".

But Lucilian had no sooner recovered his spirits, than he betrayed his want of discretion, by presuming to admonish his conqueror that he had rashly ventured, with a handful of men, to expose his person in the midst of his enemies.

Once a handful of men, tormented beyond endurance, sprang up as a sign that they had had enough, but Thorneycroft, a man of huge physique, rushed forward to the advancing Boers.

Apparently handfuls of migrants from Eastern Polynesia failed to establish the tanging of adzes among the conservative Western Polynesians.

Necthana escaped the bloodbath and fought his way, with his mother and sisters and a handful of warriors, to the western side of Alba, to seek refuge among the Dalriada.

Grand Alchemist upon her breast, the highest office a temple guardian could reach - but only a handful did.

Soon he found what he was seeking, and he willed his kha to an ancestral world where only a handful of voors were strong enough to go.

Amsterdam he called at the sports shop and got a handful of literature about aqualungs, and a technical handout in rather difficult French from the makers.

He had not walked more than two hours, and was staying his stomach with a handful of parched corn brought from the Indian camp, when, all at once, he found himself amid the remains of recent camp-fires on ground that was much trampled.

Thomas of BecketDon Diegoalso just back from a trip of a personal nature, having to do, he solemnly averred, with the good of his souland a handful of bodyguards and servants, boarded one of the smaller ships of his personal fleet, sailed up to Hull, there borrowed horses from the resident royal garrison, and rode from there to York.

In a flourish that surprised everyone, Bec ripped handfuls of leaves from a spindly bush and stuffed them inside the gutted perch before letting Sarah bake them on her smoking fire pit.

A handful of bigger shapes moved on the ground, grinding through American barbed wire and into the U.

A great deal of water, remarked the brief, bitterish smile, would have to go over the dam before Phyllis Dexter--dimpled and rosy and twenty-three--could realize what it meant to have a double handful of deep-rooted fixations ripped out of your viscera or wherever they were located, and every dangling, aching, red nerve fibre of them coolly examined under a microscope.

Stammel gestured to Bosk, who came forward and took a handful of tags from the quartermaster.

The bridegroom whispered to a friend of his whom he dearly loved, to fetch a big handful of birch rods, and hide them secretly under the bed, and this the other did.

Then she took small handfuls of the doughy root starch, mixed with the berries, the sweet, flavorful licorice-fern root stalk, and the sweetening and thickening sap from the birch cambium, and dropped them on the hot rocks.