hands

1. 1.

   (with `in') guardianship over; in divorce cases it is the right to house and care for and discipline a child

   “my fate is in your hands”

   “too much power in the president's hands”

   “your guests are now in my custody”

   “the mother was awarded custody of the children”

   Synonymscustody

   Broaderguardianship
2. 2.

   the force of workers available

   Synonymswork forceworkforcemanpowermen

   Broaderforce

   Narrowercomplement

   Partsshift

Other forms of hands

plural

handses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about hands

What does hands mean?

hands means "(with `in') guardianship over; in divorce cases it is the right to house and care for and discipline a child". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in hands?

hands has 1 syllable: hands. In IPA it is /ˈhændz/.

What is another word for hands?

Close synonyms include custody, work force, workforce, manpower, men. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hands a common word?

hands is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.