Word.ws English Dictionary

all hands

all hands noun: all of the passengers and crew of a ship. Also the ellipsis of all hands on deck.

Noun

all hands pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) All of the passengers and crew of a ship.

Also used as

all hands is also the ellipsis of all hands on deck.

Questions about all hands

What does all hands mean?
All hands means all of the passengers and crew of a ship.
What part of speech is all hands?
All hands is a noun.

Words near all hands in the dictionary

  1. All Hallow's Eve
  2. All Hallows
  3. All Hallows Eve
  4. All Hallows' Day
  5. All Hallows' Eve
  6. all hands
  7. all hands on deck
  8. all hands to the deck
  9. all hands to the pump
  10. all hat and no cattle
  11. all hat and no cowboy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all hands (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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