1 [C,U] (becoming old-fashioned, sometimes offensive) a permanent physical or mental condition that makes it difficult or impossible to use a particular part of your body or mind:
Despite her handicap, Jane is able to hold down a full-time job. * mental / physical / visual handicap -< DISABLED
2 [C] something that makes it difficult for sb to do sth:
Not speaking the language proved to be a bigger handicap than I'd imagined. * In a job like this, lack of experience is no real handicap.
3 [C] (sport) a race or competition in which the most skilful competitors must run further, carry extra weight, etc. in order to give all the competitors an equal chance of winning; the disadvantage that is given to a competitor in such a race or competition
4 [C] (in golf) an advantage given to a weaker player so that competition is more equal when they play against a stronger player. It is expressed as a number related to the number of times a player hits the ball and gets lower as he/she improves:
He plays off a handicap of 5.
verb (-pp-) [VN] [usuallypassive] to make sth more difficult for sb to do:
British exports have been handicapped by the strong pound.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for handicap is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is handicap a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, handicap is tagged as noun.
Does handicap appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — handicap appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
