See handwavium in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
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"2": "hand waving",
"3": "-ium",
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"name": "af"
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"etymology_text": "From hand waving + -ium (“the chemical element suffix”).",
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "2008 February 3, Jacey Bedford <jacey@artisan-harmony.com>, “Handwavium”, in rec.arts.sf.composition (Usenet):",
"text": "My handwavium was an invented mineral, but - reading up - what about platinum? Could I substitute platinum for handwavium?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 March, Alexander Jablokov, “The Boarder”, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, volume 114, number 3, Concord, N.H.: Fantasy House, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9:",
"text": "It made no sense to him that their very impossibility was their pleasure. He puzzled over the spacecraft and their handwavium drives. \"The thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, told by an engineering student who failed his graduation exams,\" was his literary judgment.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Imogen Howson, Blood of the Volcano, Cincinnati, Oh.: Samhain Publishing, →ISBN, page 167:",
"text": "She writes romantic fantasy and science fiction, and makes liberal use of the substance known as handwavium.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties."
],
"id": "en-handwavium-en-noun-ibFQHjSr",
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"raw_glosses": [
"(informal, fiction) Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "handwave"
},
{
"word": "hand waving"
},
{
"word": "handwaving"
},
{
"word": "handwavy"
},
{
"word": "wave of the hand"
}
],
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"word": "unobtainium"
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"wikipedia": [
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],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/handˈweɪ.vi.əm/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-handwavium.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/97/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-handwavium.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-handwavium.wav.mp3",
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},
{
"ipa": "/hændˈweɪ.vi.əm/",
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"word": "handwavium"
}
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}
],
"etymology_text": "From hand waving + -ium (“the chemical element suffix”).",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
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"word": "handwave"
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{
"word": "hand waving"
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{
"word": "handwaving"
},
{
"word": "handwavy"
},
{
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],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2008 February 3, Jacey Bedford <jacey@artisan-harmony.com>, “Handwavium”, in rec.arts.sf.composition (Usenet):",
"text": "My handwavium was an invented mineral, but - reading up - what about platinum? Could I substitute platinum for handwavium?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 March, Alexander Jablokov, “The Boarder”, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, volume 114, number 3, Concord, N.H.: Fantasy House, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9:",
"text": "It made no sense to him that their very impossibility was their pleasure. He puzzled over the spacecraft and their handwavium drives. \"The thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, told by an engineering student who failed his graduation exams,\" was his literary judgment.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Imogen Howson, Blood of the Volcano, Cincinnati, Oh.: Samhain Publishing, →ISBN, page 167:",
"text": "She writes romantic fantasy and science fiction, and makes liberal use of the substance known as handwavium.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
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"Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties."
],
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal, fiction) Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties."
],
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},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-handwavium.wav",
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},
{
"ipa": "/hændˈweɪ.vi.əm/",
"tags": [
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],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "unobtainium"
}
],
"word": "handwavium"
}
Download raw JSONL data for handwavium meaning in English (3.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). 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.