Word.ws English Dictionary

hand-waving

hand-waving is the alternative spelling of hand waving.

hand-waving is the alternative spelling of handwaving.

hand-waving is the present participle and gerund of hand-wave.

Meaning of hand waving

Noun

hand waving (plural hand wavings)

  1. (idiomatic) Discussion or argumentation involving approximation, vagueness, educated guessing, or the attempt to explain or excuse vagaries.
    • The sales pitch sounded good, but there was a lot of hand waving about the price.

Meaning of handwaving

Adjective

handwaving (comparative more handwaving, superlative most handwaving)

  1. (not comparable) Waving the hands.
  2. Pertaining to empty gesturing, with little substance behind it; vague; not supported by data.

Forms of hand-waving

comparativemore hand-waving
superlativemost hand-waving

Questions about hand-waving

What is hand-waving the alternative spelling of?
Hand-waving is the alternative spelling of hand waving.

Words near hand-waving in the dictionary

  1. hand-washes
  2. hand-washing
  3. hand-wave
  4. hand-waved
  5. hand-waves
  6. hand-waving
  7. hand-wavy
  8. hand-winged
  9. hand-work
  10. hand-worked
  11. hand-works

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand-waving (page history and authors); hand waving (page history and authors); handwaving (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: “hand-waving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hand-waving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.