hand over
"hand-over" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hand over” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To relinquish control or possession of something to someone.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hand-over · hand over · English
hand over · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "H" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hand over |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hand over” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hand over is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
hand over doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is hand over, spelled H-A-N-D- -O-V-E-R.
Definition
- 1To relinquish control or possession of something to someone.
- 2To deliver (someone to an enemy, police, etc.).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hand over appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I handed over the controls to the copilot.
The train was handed over 21 min. late at Salisbury, so there was every encouragement to Driver Moore, of Salisbury, to "get a move on."
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.