Handwave vs Handwavey - What's the difference?
handwave | handwavey |
(literally) The wave produced by a hand.
* 1871 , Archibald Forbes, My Experiences of the War Between France and Germany , Volume II, 2005 facsimile edition, Adamant Media Corporation,
* 1991 , Robert Barnard, A Scandal in Belgravia ,
A glib statement or explanation that glosses over important details.
* 2008 , Hyman P. Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy ,
(rhetoric, academia) To explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead.
* 2001 , Stephanie Frank Singer, Symmetry in Mechanics: A Gentle, Modern Introduction ,
As a noun handwave
is (literally) the wave produced by a hand.As a verb handwave
is (rhetoric|academia) to explain something superficially, skipping over important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead.As an adjective handwavey is
.handwave
English
Noun
(en noun)page 354,
- The leader, an upright, broad-shouldered old man, with snow-white hair, half halts his horse with a handwave of salutation, as he reaches the Imperial Crown Prince, then gallops on with the latter hanging close on his flank.
page 213,
- "In fact I tell this mob"— he gave a derogatory handwave in the direction of the ten or twelve pairs of eyes that were still intent on us—"that I was the original of these Pappa-whatsits."
- "Papparazzi."
page 285,
- In this glib handwave by Friedman, the real results are determined independently of money and financing phenomena; given the way monetarists set up the analysis, the rate of growth of money can only affect the behavior of the price level.
Verb
page 33,
- Some readers may wish to handwave this restriction away, thinking of as a differentiable vector field on that behaves badly at the origin; this approach will suffice for the purposes of this book.