handicap
1hand·i·cap
noun \ˈhan-di-ˌkap, -dē-\Definition of HANDICAP
Examples of HANDICAP
- His shyness was a handicap in his job.
- She's been practicing a lot and her handicap has gone down from 18 to 12.
Origin of HANDICAP
Related to HANDICAP
- Synonyms
- debit, disbenefit, downside, drawback, disadvantage, incommodity, liability, minus, negative, strike
Rhymes with HANDICAP
2handicap
transitive verbDefinition of HANDICAP
Examples of HANDICAP
- It's very hard to handicap the election at this point.
- <the baseball player's small size did not handicap him in the least>
First Known Use of HANDICAP
hand·i·cap
noun \ˈhan-di-ˌkap\ (Medical Dictionary)Medical Definition of HANDICAP
handicap
noun (Concise Encyclopedia)In sports and games, a method of offsetting the varying abilities or characteristics of competitors in order to equalize their chances of winning. Handicapping takes many, often complicated, forms. In horse racing, a track official known as the handicapper may assign weights to horses according to their speed in previous performances; the presumed fastest horse must carry the most weight. In golf, two unequal players may have a close match by allowing the poorer player a handicap, a certain number of uncounted strokes based on earlier performances. In sailboat racing, dissimilar boats compete under handicapping formulas that add time to the faster boats' actual elapsed time for a race; thus, the winner of a race may not be the first to finish but rather the boat that performs best in relation to its design. See also bookmaking; gambling.
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