Word.ws English Dictionary

handing out

handing out is the present participle and gerund of hand out.

Meaning of hand out

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
  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
  3. (slang) To try to impress (someone) with deceptions.

See all 4 meanings of hand out

Questions about handing out

What is handing out the present participle and gerund of?
Handing out is the present participle and gerund of hand out.

Words near handing out in the dictionary

  1. handing it out
  2. handing it to
  3. handing it to someone
  4. handing off
  5. handing on
  6. handing out
  7. handing over
  8. handing round
  9. handing someone his hat
  10. handing someone their cards
  11. handing something out like candy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: handing out (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

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