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Handle can be a noun or a verb.

handle used as a noun:

  1. A part of an object which is held in the hand when used or moved, as the haft of a sword, the knob of a door, the bail of a kettle, etc.
  2. That of which use is made; an instrument for effecting a purpose; a tool.
  3. The gross amount of wagering within a given period of time or for a given event at one of more establishments.
    "The daily handle of a Las Vegas casino is typically millions of dollars."
  4. A topological space homeomorphic to a ball but viewed as a product of two lower-dimensional balls.
  5. A name, nickname or pseudonym. [Originally Cornish-American, from Cornish hanough, later hanow (pronounced han'of or han'o) = name]
  6. A 10 fl oz (285 ml) glass of beer in the Northern Territory. See also pot, middy for other regional variations.
  7. A reference to an object or structure that can be stored in a variable.
    "This article describes how to find the module name from the window handle."

Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →

handle used as a verb:

  1. To use the hands.
    "They have hands, but they handle not - Psalm 115:7"
  2. To touch; to feel with the hand.
    "Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh - Luke 24:39"
  3. To use or hold with the hand.
    "About his altar, handling holy things - John Milton"
  4. To manage in using, as a spade or a musket; to wield; often, to manage skillfully.
    "That fellow handles his bow like a crowkeeper - Shakespeare, King Lear, IV-vi"
  5. To accustom to the hand; to work upon, or take care of, with the hands.
    "The hardness of the winters forces the breeders to house and handle their colts six months every year - Sir W. Temple"
  6. To receive and transfer; to have pass through one's hands; hence, to buy and sell; as, a merchant handles a variety of goods, or a large stock
  7. To deal with; to make a business of.
    "They that handle the law knew me not - Jeremiah, 2:8"
  8. To treat; to use, well or ill.
    "How wert thou handled being prisoner - Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, I-iv"
  9. To manage; to control; to practice skill upon.
    "You shall see how I'll handle her - Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, V-i"
  10. To use or manage in writing or speaking; to treat, as a theme, an argument, or an objection.
    "We will handle what persons are apt to envy others - Francis Bacon"

Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →

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What type of word is handle?

As detailed above, 'handle' can be a noun or a verb. Here are some examples of its usage:
  1. Noun usage: The daily handle of a Las Vegas casino is typically millions of dollars.
  2. Noun usage: This article describes how to find the module name from the window handle.
  3. Verb usage: They have hands, but they handle not - Psalm 115:7
  4. Verb usage: Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh - Luke 24:39
  5. Verb usage: About his altar, handling holy things - John Milton
  6. Verb usage: That fellow handles his bow like a crowkeeper - Shakespeare, King Lear, IV-vi
  7. Verb usage: The hardness of the winters forces the breeders to house and handle their colts six months every year - Sir W. Temple
  8. Verb usage: They that handle the law knew me not - Jeremiah, 2:8
  9. Verb usage: How wert thou handled being prisoner - Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, I-iv
  10. Verb usage: You shall see how I'll handle her - Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, V-i
  11. Verb usage: We will handle what persons are apt to envy others - Francis Bacon

Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of handle are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of handle, and guess at its most common usage.

Word Type

For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.

The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.

Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.

Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).

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