Handshake

How to spell handshake

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce handshake

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does handshake mean?

1. nounThe act of clasping another person's hand and moving it briefly up and down, used as a greeting or to confirm an agreement.
2. nounAn automated exchange of signals between two devices or programs that establishes a connection before data is transferred.

Handshake in a sentence

• The interviewer greeted each candidate with a firm handshake.

• The secure connection failed during the initial handshake between the two servers.

• They sealed the deal with a handshake rather than a signed contract.

• The protocol uses a three-step handshake to verify each device before sending data.

Where does handshake come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound of two very old native English words, both inherited from the Germanic core of the language. 'Hand' descends from Old English 'hond' or 'hand', which goes back to a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch 'hand' and German 'Hand'. 'Shake' comes from Old English 'sceacan', meaning to move quickly to and fro, the same verb that gives us a shaking branch or a shaking voice. The two were joined into the noun 'handshake' relatively recently, in the early 1800s, to name the gesture of clasping and moving another person's hand as a greeting or to seal an agreement. Because both parts are everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the compound is one of the rare modern coinages with almost no spelling trap; the main thing to remember is that it is written as a single solid word, not two.

How the word is built

• hand (the body part)
• shake (to grasp and move up and down)