Handing

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈhændɪŋ/

Definitions

1. The act of giving or passing an object to another person
2. The process of transferring an item from one hand to another
3. An action involving handing over or delivering something to someone else

Etymology: The verb "handing" is simply the "-ing" form of "hand," so its real story is the history of "hand" itself. That word goes back to Old English "hand," which came from a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch "hand," German "Hand," and Swedish "hand." Its sense of "passing something over" grew out of the plain body part: to hand something to someone is to put it into their open palm. The verb has a second, older strand. Middle English had "handen" and "honden," formed directly from the noun, meaning to handle or manage with the hands. Alongside it ran "henden," from Old English "hendan" or "gehendan," meaning to seize or grasp, which is probably what gave the modern verb its sense of holding and then giving. Cognate forms in Old Frisian, Middle Low German, Dutch and Old Norse all share this idea of taking something in the hand.

Synonyms: giving, passing

Antonyms: taking