handsel

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Aleman, Cervantes, Lesage, Defoe and Fielding were inspired to imitation, and today Lazarillo is acclaimed as the prototype of the picaresque novel, as a handsel of the arriving era of realism in European literature.

From Time Magazine Archive

His companions had promised to elect him captain; but then he must give them handsel for that, and the gold chain would just sell for the sum he wanted.

From Sidonia, the Sorceress : the Supposed Destroyer of the Whole Reigning Ducal House of Pomerania — Volume 1 by Meinhold, Wilhelm

After five minutes she went away from him, as she walked putting away in her stocking the earned money, on which, as on the first handsel, she had first spat, after a superstitious custom.

From Yama: the pit by Guerney, Bernard Guilbert

The carpenter of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, likewise, as Pepys said of a new pair of stocks in his neighborhood, took handsel of the stocks of his own making.

From Curious Punishments of Bygone Days by Earle, Alice Morse

It has been share and share alike for three years, and bravely you have all held up, and share alike it shall be now, and here's the handsel of it.

From Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth by Kingsley, Charles