The amount that a hand will grasp or contain.
"She picked up just a handful of sand from the beach before letting it slip through her fingers."
In plain English: A handful is an amount of something that you can hold easily with just your hand.
"She found that her new puppy was quite a handful to manage on its first day home."
Usage: Use handful to describe a small quantity of something loose, such as sand or coins, rather than solid objects like books. It often implies an inconveniently large number when used metaphorically in phrases like "a handful of people."
Handful comes from Middle English, combining the words "hand" and "full." It originally described something that could be held in one hand.