Definition of "handful"
handful
noun
plural handfuls or handsful
The amount that a hand will grasp or contain.
Quotations
I put two or three corns in my mouth, liked it, stole a handful, went into my chamber, chewed it, and for two months after never failed taking toll of every pennyworth of oatmeal that came into the house: […]
1712 July 26 (Gregorian calendar), [Richard Steele], “TUESDAY, July 15, 1712”, in The Spectator, number 431; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume V, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, page 130
A small number, usually approximately five.
Quotations
The names of a number of the most famous North American railroads could be found in the north-east; Pennsylvania, New York Central, Baltimore & Ohio, Chesapeake & Ohio, and the Norfolk & Western, to name but a handful.
1985, Rodger Bradley, Amtrak: The US National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Blandford Press, page 92
Was it deliberate that the first week of October 1961 was chosen to conduct a national survey of passenger usage? Why October of all months, when the holiday season was over and families back at work and at school? Was this a fiddling of the figures to make an unfair case against rail-dependent resorts such as those in the West Country, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire, where previously overloaded summer services would now only have a handful of locals on board?
2023 March 8, Howard Johnston, “Was Marples the real railway wrecker?”, in RAIL, number 978, pages 52–53
A group or number of things; a bunch.
Quotations
But, aunt, she must have had some kind of education, her accent was so pure, her English so unfaulty. The other girl dropped her h's by handfuls, and made some very wild confusion in her native etymology.
1866, Emma Jane Worboise, “Ivy Cottage”, in Sir Julian’s Wife, London: Virtue Brothers and Co., […], pages 89–90
(informal) Something which can only be managed with difficulty.
Quotations
The Southern acquired them because the little Class "B4" 0-4-0 tanks were finding heavy modern rolling stock more and more of a handful, and at war's end the railway had nothing of suitable power but short wheelbase on its books to take their place on the more tortuous of the dock lines.
1959 February, G. Freeman Allen, “Southampton—Gateway to the Ocean”, in Trains Illustrated, page 91