Word.ws English Dictionary

chancery hand

chancery hand noun: either of two styles of handwriting: a written form of black letter used in France and England from about 1350, developed in the Lateran chancelry in the 13th century, or a style of cursive handwriting introduced in the 1420s by Niccolò de' Niccoli, developed from humanist minuscule; a variety of either of these styles.

chancery hand: either of two styles of handwriting: a written form of black letter used in France and England from...
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Noun

chancery hand (plural chancery hands)

  1. (historical) Either of two styles of handwriting: a written form of black letter used in France and England from about 1350, developed in the Lateran chancelry in the 13th century, or a style of cursive handwriting introduced in the 1420s by Niccolò de' Niccoli, developed from humanist minuscule; a variety of either of these styles.
    • It begins like a transcript, at the top of the page, without the least appearance or form of an intended original : it is written in the common secretary hand of ,the age, which Crawford mistook for a chancery hand;[…].1819, Malcolm Laing, The History of Scotland, volume 1, page 373
    • Her name, from Crawford's example of it, seems to me to be written in the same chancery hand, which renders the supposed forgery a mere copy, mistaken by Welwood for the original.1830, John Pinkerton, The Literary Correspondence of John Pinkerton, Esq., volume 2, page 112

Forms of chancery hand

pluralchancery hands
alternative formChancery hand

Questions about chancery hand

What does chancery hand mean?
Chancery hand means either of two styles of handwriting: a written form of black letter used in France and England from about 1350, developed in the Lateran chancelry in the 13th century, or a style of cursive handwriting introduced in the 1420s by Niccolò de' Niccoli, developed from humanist minuscule; a variety of either of these styles.
What part of speech is chancery hand?
Chancery hand is a noun.
What is the plural of chancery hand?
The plural of chancery hand is chancery hands.

Words near chancery hand in the dictionary

  1. chanceries
  2. chancers
  3. chancery
  4. chancery court
  5. chancery courts
  6. chancery hand
  7. chancery hands
  8. Chancery Standard
  9. chances
  10. chances are
  11. chances on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chancery hand (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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