"handwave" meaning in All languages combined

See handwave on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: handwaves [plural]
Etymology: From hand + wave. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|hand|wave}} hand + wave Head templates: {{en-noun}} handwave (plural handwaves)
  1. (literally) The wave of a hand. Tags: literally
    Sense id: en-handwave-en-noun-Y2vGifxG
  2. A glib statement or explanation that glosses over important details.
    Sense id: en-handwave-en-noun-FqIxvmwc Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English links with manual fragments, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Russian translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 1 72 27 Disambiguation of English links with manual fragments: 3 52 45 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 3 57 40 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 3 71 26 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 2 75 23 Disambiguation of Terms with Russian translations: 4 65 31
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: hand-wave

Verb [English]

Forms: handwaves [present, singular, third-person], handwaving [participle, present], handwaved [participle, past], handwaved [past]
Etymology: From hand + wave. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|hand|wave}} hand + wave Head templates: {{en-verb}} handwave (third-person singular simple present handwaves, present participle handwaving, simple past and past participle handwaved)
  1. (rhetoric, academia) To explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead. Tags: rhetoric Categories (topical): Rhetoric Related terms: hand waving, handwaving, handwavium, handwavy, wave of the hand, fudge [verb], the rest is history Translations (explain something superficially): отмахнуться (otmaxnutʹsja) (note: somewhat) (Russian)
    Sense id: en-handwave-en-verb-HcfPwpFT Categories (other): English links with manual fragments Disambiguation of English links with manual fragments: 3 52 45 Topics: academia, scholarly, sciences
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: hand-wave

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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  "etymology_text": "From hand + wave.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "handwaves",
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  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1871, Archibald Forbes, My Experiences of the War Between France and Germany, facsimile edition, volume II, Adamant Media Corporation, published 2005, page 354:",
          "text": "The leader, an upright, broad-shouldered old man, with snow-white hair, half halts his horse with a handwave of salutation, as he reaches the Imperial Crown Prince, then gallops on with the latter hanging close on his flank.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1991, Robert Barnard, A Scandal in Belgravia, page 213:",
          "text": "\"[…]In fact I tell this mob\"— he gave a derogatory handwave in the direction of the ten or twelve pairs of eyes that were still intent on us—\"that I was the original of these Pappa-whatsits.\"\n\"Papparazzi.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The wave of a hand."
      ],
      "id": "en-handwave-en-noun-Y2vGifxG",
      "links": [
        [
          "wave",
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        ],
        [
          "hand",
          "hand"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(literally) The wave of a hand."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "literally"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "1 72 27",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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        {
          "_dis": "3 52 45",
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          "_dis": "3 57 40",
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          "_dis": "4 65 31",
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        {
          "ref": "2008, Hyman P. Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, page 285:",
          "text": "In this glib handwave by Friedman, the real results are determined independently of money and financing phenomena; given the way monetarists set up the analysis, the rate of growth of money can only affect the behavior of the price level.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A glib statement or explanation that glosses over important details."
      ],
      "id": "en-handwave-en-noun-FqIxvmwc",
      "links": [
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          "glib",
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      "_dis1": "0 0 0",
      "word": "hand-wave"
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  "etymology_text": "From hand + wave.",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Rhetoric",
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2001, Stephanie Frank Singer, Symmetry in Mechanics: A Gentle, Modern Introduction, page 33:",
          "text": "Some readers may wish to handwave this restriction away, thinking of #x5C;tfrac#x7B;#x5C;partial#x7D;#x7B;#x5C;partial#x5C;rho#x7D; as a differentiable vector field on #x5C;mathbb#x7B;R#x7D;² that behaves badly at the origin; this approach will suffice for the purposes of this book.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead."
      ],
      "id": "en-handwave-en-verb-HcfPwpFT",
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          "rhetoric",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(rhetoric, academia) To explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "hand waving"
        },
        {
          "word": "handwaving"
        },
        {
          "word": "handwavium"
        },
        {
          "word": "handwavy"
        },
        {
          "word": "wave of the hand"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "verb"
          ],
          "word": "fudge"
        },
        {
          "word": "the rest is history"
        }
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        "rhetoric"
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        "academia",
        "scholarly",
        "sciences"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "note": "somewhat",
          "roman": "otmaxnutʹsja",
          "sense": "explain something superficially",
          "word": "отмахнуться"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0",
      "word": "hand-wave"
    }
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  "word": "handwave"
}
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  "etymology_text": "From hand + wave.",
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      "tags": [
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      ]
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  ],
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        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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          "text": "The leader, an upright, broad-shouldered old man, with snow-white hair, half halts his horse with a handwave of salutation, as he reaches the Imperial Crown Prince, then gallops on with the latter hanging close on his flank.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1991, Robert Barnard, A Scandal in Belgravia, page 213:",
          "text": "\"[…]In fact I tell this mob\"— he gave a derogatory handwave in the direction of the ten or twelve pairs of eyes that were still intent on us—\"that I was the original of these Pappa-whatsits.\"\n\"Papparazzi.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The wave of a hand."
      ],
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          "wave",
          "wave"
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          "hand",
          "hand"
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      ],
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        "(literally) The wave of a hand."
      ],
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      ]
    },
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        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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          "ref": "2008, Hyman P. Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, page 285:",
          "text": "In this glib handwave by Friedman, the real results are determined independently of money and financing phenomena; given the way monetarists set up the analysis, the rate of growth of money can only affect the behavior of the price level.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A glib statement or explanation that glosses over important details."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "glib",
          "glib"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "hand-wave"
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  ],
  "word": "handwave"
}

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  "etymology_text": "From hand + wave.",
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      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "handwaving",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
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    {
      "form": "handwaved",
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  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "hand waving"
    },
    {
      "word": "handwaving"
    },
    {
      "word": "handwavium"
    },
    {
      "word": "handwavy"
    },
    {
      "word": "wave of the hand"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "verb"
      ],
      "word": "fudge"
    },
    {
      "word": "the rest is history"
    }
  ],
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          "ref": "2001, Stephanie Frank Singer, Symmetry in Mechanics: A Gentle, Modern Introduction, page 33:",
          "text": "Some readers may wish to handwave this restriction away, thinking of #x5C;tfrac#x7B;#x5C;partial#x7D;#x7B;#x5C;partial#x5C;rho#x7D; as a differentiable vector field on #x5C;mathbb#x7B;R#x7D;² that behaves badly at the origin; this approach will suffice for the purposes of this book.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "rhetoric",
          "rhetoric"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(rhetoric, academia) To explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "rhetoric"
      ],
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        "academia",
        "scholarly",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "hand-wave"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "note": "somewhat",
      "roman": "otmaxnutʹsja",
      "sense": "explain something superficially",
      "word": "отмахнуться"
    }
  ],
  "word": "handwave"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.