"handsbreadth" meaning in English

See handsbreadth in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: handsbreadths [plural]
Etymology: From hand + -s- + breadth. Etymology templates: {{af|en|hand|-s-|breadth}} hand + -s- + breadth Head templates: {{en-noun}} handsbreadth (plural handsbreadths)
  1. a small distance

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "hand",
        "3": "-s-",
        "4": "breadth"
      },
      "expansion": "hand + -s- + breadth",
      "name": "af"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From hand + -s- + breadth.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "handsbreadths",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "handsbreadth (plural handsbreadths)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "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"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms interfixed with -s-",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1855, John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Volume II.(of III) 1566-74:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1905, Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries:",
          "text": "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 shielding arms of the divine Mother of the worlds, only to find, when he turns back his face, that he has never been outside their protecting shelter, and that wherever he may wander that guarding love is round him still.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "a small distance"
      ],
      "id": "en-handsbreadth-en-noun-O~s3902S",
      "links": [
        [
          "distance",
          "distance"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "handsbreadth"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "hand",
        "3": "-s-",
        "4": "breadth"
      },
      "expansion": "hand + -s- + breadth",
      "name": "af"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From hand + -s- + breadth.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "handsbreadths",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "handsbreadth (plural handsbreadths)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English compound terms",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms interfixed with -s-",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1855, John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Volume II.(of III) 1566-74:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1905, Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries:",
          "text": "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 shielding arms of the divine Mother of the worlds, only to find, when he turns back his face, that he has never been outside their protecting shelter, and that wherever he may wander that guarding love is round him still.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "a small distance"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "distance",
          "distance"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "handsbreadth"
}

Download raw JSONL data for handsbreadth meaning in English (1.7kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English 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.