Plural of handful; the amount of something that can be held in one hand, or sometimes meaning a small number of something.
From Old English hand + full (as much as fills). This word has been used for over 1,000 years to measure informal quantities.
Different people have different 'handfuls' because hands vary in size, so medieval merchants standardized measurements like the 'handspan,' which is why we now have official units like inches!
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