Handbag
nounA small bag carried in the hand or on the shoulder, used to hold personal items such as keys, money, and a phone.
How to spell handbag
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce handbag
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does handbag mean?
- nounA small bag carried in the hand or on the shoulder, used to hold personal items such as keys, money, and a phone.
Handbag in a sentence
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She dug through her handbag looking for the car keys.
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The leather handbag matched her shoes and coat.
Where does handbag come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a transparent compound built from two very old words. The first element, hand, comes straight from the Old English hand, a Germanic word for the part of the arm below the wrist that has barely changed in a thousand years. The second element, bag, arrived a little later, probably from the Old Norse baggi, meaning a pack or bundle, which Scandinavian settlers brought to England. The combined word handbag is much more recent, appearing in the early 1800s to describe a small bag carried in the hand, originally for documents and travel items rather than purely as a lady's accessory. Because both halves are common everyday words, the spelling holds no surprises: it is simply hand plus bag, written solid with no break or hyphen.
How the word is built
- hand (from Old English hand)
- bag (from Old Norse baggi: a pack or bundle)
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