Word.ws English Dictionary

gladhand

gladhand is the alternative spelling of glad-hand.

Meaning of glad-hand

Verb

glad-hand (third-person singular simple present glad-hands, present participle glad-handing, simple past and past participle glad-handed)

  1. (transitive) To be overly friendly with (a stranger) in order to gain an advantage.
    • Not in many a moon had he glad-handed so many people. […] The President, in fact, behaved noticeably like a candidate for reelection.1948 February 9, “The Presidency: Getting Ready”, in Time, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2011
  2. To extend a glad hand (to someone); to welcome warmly.

Forms of gladhand

third-person singular presentgladhands
present participlegladhanding
past participlegladhanded
pastgladhanded

Origin of gladhand

From glad + hand.

Questions about gladhand

What is gladhand the alternative spelling of?
Gladhand is the alternative spelling of glad-hand.

Words near gladhand in the dictionary

  1. Gladfelter
  2. Gladfield
  3. gladful
  4. gladfully
  5. gladfulness
  6. gladhand
  7. gladhanded
  8. gladhanding
  9. gladhandings
  10. gladhands
  11. gladhearted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gladhand (page history and authors); glad-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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Cite this entry: “gladhand.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gladhand. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.