Hand

How to spell hand

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hand

What does hand mean?

1. nounThe part of the body at the end of the arm, including the palm and fingers.
2. verbTo give or pass something to someone using the hands.
3. nounA person employed to do manual work, especially on a farm or ship.

Hand in a sentence

• noun

  She raised her hand to ask a question during the meeting.

• verb

  Please hand the report to the manager before lunch.

• noun

  The ranch hired an extra hand to help with the harvest.

• noun

  He burned his hand on the hot pan while cooking dinner.

• verb

  The waiter will hand each guest a menu on arrival.

• noun

  Every deck hand reported for duty before the ship sailed.

Where does hand come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is one of the oldest words in English, inherited directly from Old English 'hand' or 'hond', which named the part of the arm beyond the wrist. It traces back to a shared Proto-Germanic form 'handuz', the same ancestor that gave German 'Hand' and Dutch 'hand', so the word has barely changed in well over a thousand years. Some scholars connect 'handuz' to an old root meaning 'to seize' or 'to grasp', which fits the hand as the organ that takes hold of things, although that link is not certain. From the literal body part the word spread into dozens of figurative uses: a 'hand' of cards, the 'hands' of a clock, a hired 'hand' on a farm, and the verb meaning to pass something along. Because the spelling is short, native, and phonetic, it has stayed simple and reliable throughout its history.

How the word is built

• hand (Old English 'hand', the body part); no affixes, a single native root