"hand waving" meaning in All languages combined

See hand waving on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: en-au-hand waving.ogg Forms: hand wavings [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} hand waving (plural hand wavings)
  1. (idiomatic) Discussion or argumentation involving approximation, vagueness, educated guessing, or the attempt to explain or excuse vagaries. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: hand-waving, handwaving Derived forms: handwavium Related terms: handwave, handwaving, handwavy, wave of the hand Translations (argumentation involving approximation): تَلْوِيح بِالْيَد (talwīḥ bi-l-yad) [masculine] (Arabic), käsienheiluttelu (Finnish), נפנופי־ידיים (Hebrew)

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for hand waving meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hand wavings",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
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  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "hand waving (plural hand wavings)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Arabic translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Hebrew translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "handwavium"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The sales pitch sounded good, but there was a lot of hand waving about the price.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2000 August 21, “letter”, in Time",
          "text": "Protesters who demand that this brilliantly humane enterprise be stopped should have their motives questioned. Their protest is nothing but the mindless hand waving of Luddites.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Discussion or argumentation involving approximation, vagueness, educated guessing, or the attempt to explain or excuse vagaries."
      ],
      "id": "en-hand_waving-en-noun-l6-op-Cn",
      "links": [
        [
          "Discussion",
          "discussion"
        ],
        [
          "argumentation",
          "argumentation"
        ],
        [
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        ],
        [
          "vague",
          "vague"
        ],
        [
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        ],
        [
          "explain",
          "explain"
        ],
        [
          "excuse",
          "excuse"
        ],
        [
          "vagaries",
          "vagary"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Discussion or argumentation involving approximation, vagueness, educated guessing, or the attempt to explain or excuse vagaries."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "handwave"
        },
        {
          "word": "handwaving"
        },
        {
          "word": "handwavy"
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          "word": "wave of the hand"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "hand-waving"
        },
        {
          "word": "handwaving"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ar",
          "lang": "Arabic",
          "roman": "talwīḥ bi-l-yad",
          "sense": "argumentation involving approximation",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "تَلْوِيح بِالْيَد"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "argumentation involving approximation",
          "word": "käsienheiluttelu"
        },
        {
          "code": "he",
          "lang": "Hebrew",
          "sense": "argumentation involving approximation",
          "word": "נפנופי־ידיים"
        }
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "en-au-hand waving.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3e/En-au-hand_waving.ogg/En-au-hand_waving.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/En-au-hand_waving.ogg"
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  "word": "hand waving"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "handwavium"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hand wavings",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "hand waving (plural hand wavings)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "handwave"
    },
    {
      "word": "handwaving"
    },
    {
      "word": "handwavy"
    },
    {
      "word": "wave of the hand"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
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        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Terms with Arabic translations",
        "Terms with Finnish translations",
        "Terms with Hebrew translations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The sales pitch sounded good, but there was a lot of hand waving about the price.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2000 August 21, “letter”, in Time",
          "text": "Protesters who demand that this brilliantly humane enterprise be stopped should have their motives questioned. Their protest is nothing but the mindless hand waving of Luddites.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Discussion or argumentation involving approximation, vagueness, educated guessing, or the attempt to explain or excuse vagaries."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "Discussion",
          "discussion"
        ],
        [
          "argumentation",
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        [
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          "vague"
        ],
        [
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          "guess"
        ],
        [
          "explain",
          "explain"
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        [
          "excuse",
          "excuse"
        ],
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          "vagaries",
          "vagary"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Discussion or argumentation involving approximation, vagueness, educated guessing, or the attempt to explain or excuse vagaries."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "en-au-hand waving.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3e/En-au-hand_waving.ogg/En-au-hand_waving.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/En-au-hand_waving.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "hand-waving"
    },
    {
      "word": "handwaving"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ar",
      "lang": "Arabic",
      "roman": "talwīḥ bi-l-yad",
      "sense": "argumentation involving approximation",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "تَلْوِيح بِالْيَد"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "argumentation involving approximation",
      "word": "käsienheiluttelu"
    },
    {
      "code": "he",
      "lang": "Hebrew",
      "sense": "argumentation involving approximation",
      "word": "נפנופי־ידיים"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hand waving"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-06-20 using wiktextract (1b9bfc5 and 0136956). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.