secret handshake

noun

Definitions

  1. A distinct form of handshake, often with the fingers or thumbs specially positioned, that…

    A distinct form of handshake, often with the fingers or thumbs specially positioned, that covertly indicates a person's membership of a club or clique.

  2. Any shibboleth or distinguishing sign.

    • Stuart Auerbach, who covered legal affairs at the Washington Post, has speculated that lawyers' language serves “as a secret handshake in a fraternity, letting others know you are one of the tribe.”
    • A signal that is not used by the population at large can be used by mutant members as a kind of secret handshake to identify an in-group. Mutants can then cooperate with those who share the secret handshake and defect against the others.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for secret handshake. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA