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# handful

«handful» in Mova's school dictionary: **The amount you can hold in one hand: «a handful of sweets»** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a handful, handfuls)

### meaning for a pupil

1) The amount you can hold in one hand: «a handful of sweets». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#m1)

2) A small number of people or things: «Only a handful of children came». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#m2)

3) (informal, a handful) A person or animal that is hard to control: «The puppy is a handful». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In cooking and science, «a handful» is a rough, not exact, measure. In maths word problems «a handful» means only a few, not a fixed number. In everyday life «a real handful» describes a lively, naughty child or pet. Phrases: «a handful of», «a real handful».

### examples

- She grabbed a handful of popcorn. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x1)
- Add a handful of nuts to the salad. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x2)
- Only a handful of people came to the meeting. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x3)
- Our new puppy is a real handful! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x4)
- He threw a handful of seeds to the birds. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x5)
- A handful of stars shone through the clouds. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x6)
- Twenty thousand Persian soldiers had fallen before that handful of men. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/#x7)

### note

Plural: handfuls (also handsful, rare). Spelling: one l at the end. «A handful» is never an exact number; in a maths problem you need the actual number. «A handful of» + plural noun: a handful of coins.

### In the corpora

- ["A handful" means hard to control.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/14-family-and-behaviour/10/)
- [Harry in Manchester grabbed a handful of sweets from the pick-and-mix because nobody was watching.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/338-sweets-change-and-a-friends-toy/1/)
- [Soil is alive: one handful of good soil holds more tiny living things than there are people on Earth.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/63-soil-and-what-lives-in-it/3/)
- [Better is a handful of quietness, than both the hands full of labour and striving after wind.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/jps/ECC.79/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «handful» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/handful/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.