handshake
verb · noun
Simple meaning
The grasping of hands by two people when greeting, leave-taking, or making an agreement.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
handshaykSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhændʃeɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
intransitive
To perform a handshake; to shake hands.
computingintransitive
To perform a handshake with another device.
noun
The grasping of hands by two people when greeting, leave-taking, or making an agreement.
computing
An exchange of signals between two devices when communications begin in order to ensure synchronization.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The grasping of hands by two people when greeting, leave-taking, or making an agreement.
Used this way, handshake is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A lucrative severance agreement offered to an employee (usually as an incentive to retire).
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to perform a handshake
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.