Word.ws English Dictionary

handfasting

handfasting is the present participle and gerund of handfast.

Meaning of handfast

Verb

handfast (third-person singular simple present handfasts, present participle handfasting, simple past and past participle handfasted)

  1. (transitive) To pledge; to bind.
  2. (Scotland, transitive, archaic or historical except Wicca) To betroth by joining hands, in order to allow for cohabitation before the celebration of marriage; to marry provisionally.
    • No, Sir Priest or Sir Preacher, Catherine is not my wife— […] she is not my wife, but she is handfasted with me, and that makes her as honest a woman. [...] When we are handfasted, as we term it, we are man and wife for a year and a day—that space gone by, each may chuse another mate, or, at their...1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John...

See all 6 meanings of handfast

Noun

handfasting (plural handfastings)

  1. The ceremony in which people handfast.

Forms of handfasting

pluralhandfastings

Questions about handfasting

What does handfasting mean?
Handfasting means the ceremony in which people handfast.
What is handfasting the present participle and gerund of?
Handfasting is the present participle and gerund of handfast.
What part of speech is handfasting?
Handfasting is a noun.
What is the plural of handfasting?
The plural of handfasting is handfastings.

Words near handfasting in the dictionary

  1. handes
  2. handest
  3. handeth
  4. handfast
  5. handfasted
  6. handfasting
  7. handfastings
  8. handfastly
  9. handfasts
  10. handfed
  11. handfeed

Source and license

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