Word.ws English Dictionary

kissing hands

kissing hands is the present participle and gerund of kiss hands.

Meaning of kiss hands

Verb

kiss hands (third-person singular simple present kisses hands, present participle kissing hands, simple past and past participle kissed hands)

  1. (UK) To formally accept an appointment as prime minister or certain other ministerial positions in a royal ceremony.
    • Bishop Wilberforce had accompanied Mr. Gladstone to Windsor, when he went to kiss hands on his appointment as Prime Minister.1896, Reginald Baliol Brett Esher (Viscount), The Yoke of Empire: Sketches of the Queen's Prime Ministers, page 175
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see kiss, hands.

Questions about kissing hands

What is kissing hands the present participle and gerund of?
Kissing hands is the present participle and gerund of kiss hands.

Words near kissing hands in the dictionary

  1. kissing goes by favor
  2. kissing goodbye
  3. kissing gourami
  4. kissing gouramies
  5. kissing gouramis
  6. kissing hands
  7. kissing kin
  8. kissing number
  9. kissing numbers
  10. kissing off
  11. kissing one's teeth

Source and license

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