handbasket
handbasket noun: a basket with a handle.
Noun
handbasket (plural handbaskets)
- A basket with a handle.
- To speake what I doe thinke of the youth, I can not bee induced to thinke, that hee hath had his bringing vp at any other trade, then in carryeng long Meg of Westminsters hand-basket, and in attending vppon some other of his auntes, at her appointment while shee liued.1589, Martin Marprelate, Theses Martinianae
- […] she had always lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and was trying to find it, with all her might and main, among an immense quantity of English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon the seashore, at the bottom of it.1846, Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, page 185
Examples of handbasket in a sentence
- She has a whole trolleyful of purchases, he a mere handbasket.1999, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 20, in Disgrace, page 179:
- I have always wondered how the world, which is very large, can fit into something as small as a handbasket.2013, Paul Auster, Here and Now: Letters (2008–2011), page 182:
Forms of handbasket
| plural | handbaskets |
|---|
Origin of handbasket
From hand + basket.
Words formed from handbasket
Questions about handbasket
- What does handbasket mean?
- Handbasket means a basket with a handle.
- How do you use handbasket in a sentence?
- She has a whole trolleyful of purchases, he a mere handbasket.
- What part of speech is handbasket?
- Handbasket is a noun.
- What is the plural of handbasket?
- The plural of handbasket is handbaskets.
Words near handbasket in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: handbasket (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: “handbasket.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/handbasket. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.