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handwaving. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
From hand + waving.
Pronunciation
Adjective
handwaving (comparative more handwaving, superlative most handwaving)
- (not comparable) Waving the hands.
- Pertaining to empty gesturing, with little substance behind it; vague; not supported by data.
Translations
Noun
handwaving (countable and uncountable, plural handwavings)
- (chiefly figuratively) Alternative spelling of hand waving (“empty gesturing”)
2009 November 3, “Squid Business”, in The Economist:McClatchy goes on to try and level a damning critique, which amounts to a lot of handwaving about things we already know.
2017, Torkel Franzén, Inexhaustibility: A Non-Exhaustive Treatment, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 6:If one looks today at the logical literature, one finds that there is a great deal of handwaving going on of the same kind as that used by Gödel in his paper. That is, informal arguments are given to show that a formalization of a certain statement is formally provable in a certain theory.
Verb
handwaving
- present participle and gerund of handwave