Word.ws English Dictionary

hand wringings

hand wringings is the plural of hand wringing.

Meaning of hand wringing

Noun

hand wringing (countable and uncountable, plural hand wringings)

  1. The repeated clasping or squeezing of the hands as a symptom of distress.
    • Whisperings filled the corridors with unearthly sounds — the hand-wringing and breast-beating of the elder sisters — the sighs and sobs of the younger.1862, Anna Maria Hall, chapter XIII, in Can Wrong Be Right?
  2. (figuratively) A feigned exhibition of distress, usually with implied inaction or vacillating in the face of a dilemma or crisis.
    • On the one hand, there is the danger of ineffectual and often counterproductive conservative handwringing over the crisis.2001, Thomas W. Smith, Revaluing Ethics: Aristotle's Dialectical Pedagogy, page 1

Questions about hand wringings

What is hand wringings the plural of?
Hand wringings is the plural of hand wringing.

Words near hand wringings in the dictionary

  1. hand wheel
  2. hand wheels
  3. hand windmill
  4. hand windmills
  5. hand wringing
  6. hand wringings
  7. hand's turn
  8. hand, foot and mouth disease
  9. hand, foot, and mouth disease
  10. hand-adze
  11. hand-adzes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand wringings (page history and authors); hand wringing (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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