handsbreadth
handsbreadth noun: a small distance.
Noun
handsbreadth (plural handsbreadths)
- a small distance
- The provinces of Holland and Zealand were stanch and true, but the inequality of the contest between a few brave men, upon that handsbreadth of territory, and the powerful Spanish Empire, seemed to render the issue hopeless.1855, John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Volume II.(of III) 1566-74
- As a child, having thrust away the mother's guiding hand and hidden its face against the wall, may fancy itself alone and forgotten, until, turning with a cry, it finds around it the protecting mother-arms that were never but a handsbreadth away; so does man in his wilfulness push away the...1905, Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries
Forms of handsbreadth
| plural | handsbreadths |
|---|
Origin of handsbreadth
From hand + -s- + breadth.
Questions about handsbreadth
- What does handsbreadth mean?
- Handsbreadth means a small distance.
- What part of speech is handsbreadth?
- Handsbreadth is a noun.
- What is the plural of handsbreadth?
- The plural of handsbreadth is handsbreadths.
Words near handsbreadth in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: handsbreadth (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: “handsbreadth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/handsbreadth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.