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How to understand and explain words “bare handful”?

You are one of the bare handful for whom there is no need to learn.

How to say that phrase in other words?

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When you grab something (like grain) with your hand, the amount of grain you can hold is very limited and it is small. The word handful means:

A small number or amount: 'only a handful of people were in the pub.'

The adjective bare is used as an intensifier (attributive) to emphasize the small number in your context. For example:

All you need to get started with this program is a bare 10K bytes of memory

10K byte memory is an extremely small amount of memory and the adjective bare intensifies the meaning.

Your sentence could be rephrased to:

You are one of the extremely small number of people for whom there is no need to learn.

In other words:

There are so many people for whom there is need to learn, but you are an exception (there is no need to learn for you) that is not easy to find (in this world).

[Oxford Online Dictionary]

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  • Thank you for the explanation. But now I'm facing much more complex problem: which answer should be accepted ><
    – Schullz
    Commented Apr 26, 2016 at 15:53
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    @Schullz You have every right to accept whichever you find more helpful and no one will raise any issue with your decision, but it would be better for you to wait for a few days since other users might write up more helpful answers.
    – user24743
    Commented Apr 26, 2016 at 15:56
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    It may be worth noting that "handful" has a (fairly loose) connection with the number 5. If someone tells me to go get "a handful" of something (and that something isn't, for example, small candies where a literal handful makes sense) I'd almost certainly get five of them, though if someone said "there are a handful of messages for you" I wouldn't assume that there were exactly five.
    – Tin Wizard
    Commented Apr 26, 2016 at 17:49
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"Bare handful" in this case has the sense of "very few".

A "handful" in this usage is generally a small amount (imagine the amount you can hold in a single hand)...

Only a handful of people know the location of the secret base.

"Bare" means minimum or least possible.

She ​eats only the bare ​minimum to ​stay ​alive.

Combining the two gives you a "bare handful" - or an minimal handful. So, while a handful of people might be 20, a bare handful may be more like 5.

When used differently, note that "handful" can also mean "troublesome" or "difficult".

That kid sure is a handful.

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  • Thank you for the explanation. But now I'm facing much more complex problem: which answer should be accepted ><
    – Schullz
    Commented Apr 26, 2016 at 15:54
  • 2
    Sorry, I know that's difficult. You can accept whichever you find more helpful... or you can accept neither. If you give it some time, you may get additional answers which give more insight to your question. You could also wait to see how the voting goes and see which the community thinks is the "better" answer.
    – Catija
    Commented Apr 26, 2016 at 15:57

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