Word.ws English Dictionary

hand out

hand out verb: to distribute; to give out, either by hand or as if so (figuratively).

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To distribute; to give out, either by hand or as if so (figuratively).
    • Near-synonyms: give out, pass out, send out
    • Homer’s entrepreneurial spirit proves altogether overly infectious. Homer gives Barney a pep talk when he encounters him dressed up like a baby handing out fliers (Barney in humiliating costumes=always funny) and it isn’t long until Barney has purchased a truck of his own and set up shop as the...2012 June 3, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)
  2. To help (someone) from a vehicle.
    • ‘Lydgate has a lot of ideas […],’ resumed Mr Brooke, after he had handed out Lady Chettam, and had returned to be civil to a group of Middlemarchers.1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book I, ch. 10
    • He jumped onto the deck and handed her out of the gondola.2008, Deborah Weisgall, The World Before Her, page 107
  3. (slang) To try to impress (someone) with deceptions.

Phrase

hand out

  1. (slang) a player is out

Synonyms of hand out

Forms of hand out

third-person singular presenthands out
present participlehanding out
past participlehanded out
pasthanded out

Words formed from hand out

Questions about hand out

What does hand out mean?
Hand out means to distribute; to give out, either by hand or as if so (figuratively).
What part of speech is hand out?
Hand out can be a verb or a phrase.
What is the past tense of hand out?
The past tense of hand out is handed out.

Words near hand out in the dictionary

  1. hand off
  2. hand on
  3. hand on heart
  4. hand organ
  5. hand organs
  6. hand out
  7. hand over
  8. hand over fist
  9. hand over hand
  10. hand over head
  11. hand paper

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand out (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hand out.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hand out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hand_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.