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HANDWRITING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The activity of writing by hand
Example:
handwriting can be slow and painful for one with arthritis
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("handwriting" is a kind of...):
committal to writing; writing (the activity of putting something in written form)
Domain member category:
legibility; readability (a quality of writing (print or handwriting) that can be easily read)
illegibility (the quality of writing (print or handwriting) that cannot be deciphered)
hand; handwriting; script (something written by hand)
backhand; left-slanting ((of handwriting) having the letters slanting backward)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "handwriting"):
stenography (the act or art of writing in shorthand)
subscription (the act of signing your name; writing your signature (as on a document))
Derivation:
handwrite (write by hand)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Something written by hand
Example:
his hand was illegible
Synonyms:
hand; handwriting; script
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("handwriting" is a kind of...):
writing (letters or symbols that are written or imprinted on a surface to represent the sounds or words of a language)
Domain category:
handwriting (the activity of writing by hand)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "handwriting"):
shorthand; stenography; tachygraphy (a method of writing rapidly using an abbreviated symbolic system)
cursive; cursive script; longhand; running hand (rapid handwriting in which letters are set down in full and are cursively connected within words without lifting the writing implement from the paper)
calligraphy; chirography; penmanship (beautiful handwriting)
cacography; scratch; scrawl; scribble (poor handwriting)
Derivation:
handwrite (write by hand)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb handwrite
Context examples:
To her, the handwriting itself, independent of anything it may convey, is a blessedness.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words "JANE EYRE"—the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
When I called on Wednesday there was a letter with the West Kensington postmark upon it, and my name scrawled across the envelope in a handwriting which looked like a barbed-wire railing.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A branch of artificial intelligence concerned with the identification of visual or audio patterns by computers.For the computer to recognize the patterns, the patterns must be converted into digital signals and compared with patterns already stored in memory.Some uses of this technology are in character recognition, voice recognition, handwriting recognition, and robotics.
(Pattern Recognition, NCI Thesaurus)
The perpetual commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in union with her opinion of each.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family, in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto:—Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset, and Sir Walter's handwriting again in this finale:—Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Walter.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Don’t you see, my young friend, that they were very anxious to obtain a specimen of your handwriting, and had no other way of doing it?
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He reread the letter adoringly, dwelling over her handwriting, loving each stroke of her pen, and in the end kissing her signature.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The varieties of handwriting were farther talked of, and the usual observations made.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Never were such characters cut by any other human being as Edmund's commonest handwriting gave!
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
