handhold

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,431 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: handholds

A handhold is the place a climber grips with a hand. Find a handhold, a good handhold, no handhold at all.

Real climbing rests more on the feet than the hands, and beginners over-grip and tire their forearms — the handhold is for balance as much as for pulling. On an indoor wall the holds are bolted on and colour-coded by route.

Definitions of handhold

1nounhandholdThe place a climber grips with a hand.B2+
“Halfway up the rock face, she reached for the next handhold and pulled herself up.”

handhold is a grip.

Where it comes from

From hand + hold.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Camping & Outdoors

Practise this word

handhold in the wild

Closed positions employ either body contact or body support, that is, holding each other is not limited to handhold.
Closed position
Assuming the shadow position (with any handhold), the leader leads the follower into chicken walks.
Chicken walks
During these turns, they may twist their handhold into intricate pretzels.
Merengue (dance)
Despite the single-like step, variations of the handhold combined with turns give the dance infinite dance move options.
Cajun jig
A plastic piece at one end of the track serves as both a handhold for the toy and an adjustable slider to position the width of the track.
WHEE-LO

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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