hand wringing
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.70 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The repeated clasping or squeezing of the hands as a symptom of distress.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A feigned exhibition of distress, usually with implied inaction or vacillating in the face of a dilemma or crisis.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Whisperings filled the corridors with unearthly sounds — the hand-wringing and breast-beating of the elder sisters — the sighs and sobs of the younger."
- "On the one hand, there is the danger of ineffectual and often counterproductive conservative handwringing over the crisis."
- "As noted, the confusion and hand wringing about who should do what mostly flows from a failure to clearly think through what an epidemic is and what will be demanded in response."
- "And Andrew Marantz reminisced about Tucker Carlson’s wondrous reign at Fox News: “And who could forget the ‘Tucker Carlson Originals’ special ‘The End of Men,’ […]? That special also featured hand-wringing about ‘soy boys,’ paeans to raw-egg slonkers and homoerotic montages, apparently filmed on Alex Jones’s bocce court, […].”"
- "The hand-wringing hypocrisy and the pant-wetting that we are seeing over someone criticising the police correctly is amazing."