Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective not comparable Waving the hands.
- adjective Pertaining to empty
gesturing , with little substance behind it;vague . - noun Frantic or conspicuous
gesturing (during an argument etc.), especially as contrasted with a lack of underlying substance or meaning; empty gesturing. - verb Third-person singular simple present indicative form of
handwave .
Etymologies
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Examples
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It really undermines confidence in science if people are always being subjected to what we call handwaving arguments that all complexity had to have had an incremental origin.
ScreenTalk 2009
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It really undermines confidence in science if people are always being subjected to what we call handwaving arguments that all complexity had to have had an incremental origin.
ScreenTalk 2009
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It really undermines confidence in science if people are always being subjected to what we call handwaving arguments that all complexity had to have had an incremental origin.
ScreenTalk 2009
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It really undermines confidence in science if people are always being subjected to what we call handwaving arguments that all complexity had to have had an incremental origin.
ScreenTalk 2009
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It really undermines confidence in science if people are always being subjected to what we call handwaving arguments that all complexity had to have had an incremental origin.
ScreenTalk 2009
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It really undermines confidence in science if people are always being subjected to what we call handwaving arguments that all complexity had to have had an incremental origin.
ScreenTalk 2009
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A shitload of historical accounts of what was happening in Greenland several thousand miles to the south and a lot of airy handwaving is irrelevant.
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I mean, there are works which use real science rather than handwaving, works in which the handwaving is indistinguishable from hokum, works which treat hokum as if it were real science, and works which don't actually "rationalise" at all.
The Great Debate Hal Duncan 2005
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Until then it is hand waving and I suspect behind the handwaving is the desire for another bureaucracy.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Do Markets Give Us Too Many Choices? 2007
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This is called handwaving, and it's a trick that writers use to bullshit the reader.
Finding the fairy door. Jeff 2005
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