4 ms·
Very interesting, and daring of them to taste food having spent 10 months in the ocean! That must have been an epic "for science!" moment, for sure. Semi-meta:
by unwind 4y ago
Very interesting, and daring of them to taste food having spent 10 months in the ocean! That must have been an epic "for science!" moment, for sure.
Semi-meta: as a non-native speaker, does the expression "a handful of apples" feel natural? Is that, like, 4-5 apples, or whatever you feel a handful corresponds to?
I mean, most people will struggle actually holding more than one or two apples in a single hand, but perhaps that part is so idiomatic that the literal meaning of the words don't matter? Would you say "a handful of aircraft carriers"?
- eschneider 4y agoMore like putting out a platter of "Free Food!" for grad students.
- jfengel 4y agoYes, that's fine. English speakers regularly use "handful" to mean "about five". As a random example I googled "handful of buildings" and got >700,000 hits, e.g. "Charnley-Persky House is one of a handful of buildings that display the combined talents of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright". You can even have "a handful" of non-physical things: "a handful of ideas" gets almost 5 million hits on Google, e.g. "We started with a handful of ideas that sprung out of our collective experiences on social media."
- unwind 4y agoCool, thanks!
- jmkb 4y agoTo me (native English a la USA) apples are in a sort of uncanny valley between things that could in fact be measured by the physical handful, like peanuts, and things that couldn't -- buildings being way off the charts, obviously.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoContext will make the difference. If you say "grab a handful of apples", no one will believe you meant to say it, because that doesn't make any sense. "There are a handful of apples" is a different usage, which people will accept.
- jmkb 4y agoWell maybe. I've literally grabbed handfuls of wild apples, about the size of ping-pong balls. (Maybe better described as feral apples? Old orchards with trees unpruned for decades.)
- staunch 4y agoFYI: anyone eating wild apples should take care to avoid "beach apples" cause they're highly toxic. https://www.google.com/search?q=beach+apple&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=beach+apple&source=lnms&tbm=... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchineel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchineel
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- egypturnash 4y agoSame. A single apple, as found in the grocery store, is about one handful. Once you start talking about things much bigger than what an average human hand can hold then "a handful" does work as a synonym for "a few things" - probably less than ten.
- fbdab103 4y ago>..."a few things" - probably less than ten. Now those are fighting words. "A few" is obviously 3-5, six in a dire emergency.
- rayiner 4y agohttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=A%20couple%20few https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=A%20couple%2...
- derefr 4y agoI feel like, when talking about things which you'd usually expect in large quantity, "a few" means "any less than makes a pile." E.g. for grains of rice, even 23 or so of them could still constitute "a few grains stuck to the sides of the bowl." Similarly, in databases, "a few rows" is any amount that's not Big Data ;)
- DonHopkins 4y agoWhile "a handful of testicles" means exactly two. https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/327276064009240577?lang=en https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/327276064009240577?la...
- zdw 4y agoNever really thought about this, but I wonder whether "handful" also is roughly equivalent to "number you can count on one hand" (ie, around 4 or 5 if counting with fingers).
- lotsofpulp 4y agoAs an American English speaker, I have never come across context where a handful means about five. Handful has meant a relatively small amount, with the actual quantity always depending on the context of the item being discussed.
- derefr 4y agoThe parent says "about five" because you have to choose to say "a handful" over "a few" or "several" or "a dozen or so" or just "many." Five is the sweet spot where none of those other terms apply.
- eCa 4y agoAs a non-native English speaker, I’m curious about what the minimum and maximum values of handful would be (and what the items being referred to are)? When the same term is used in my (western European) language, I would probably put the assumed range in 4-6, potentially 3-7.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoI wouldn't think about it in terms of minimum and maximum values. I'd use "a handful" to emphasize ideas like this: - The number of items being quantified is small - You could make and understand a list that included them all - I don't know the exact number offhand But what counts as a "small number" varies depending on what you're talking about.
- pengaru 4y agoAgreed. A handful of M&Ms or Skittles is far more than five...
- glxxyz 4y agoA handful means either the amount you can hold in your hand "add a handful of salt", or a small number so "Country X only has a handful of aircraft carriers" is fine. I think with apples it would be the second meaning but it's a grey area. With something smaller like "a handful of cherries" I'd go with the amount that can be held.
- fritzo 4y agoGreat observation! Indeed a "handful of blueberries" is a larger number of blueberries than the number of planets in "a handful of planets", or senate bills in "a handful of bills", and more than the handful of examples I've mentioned
- ch4s3 4y agoI would never personally say a handful of apples because it is an object where the size might be in question and potentially a few small apples might fit in you hand. Conversely yes I’d say a handful of cars/buildings/ships to mean 4-6 ish.