to change hands
12
3.4
- phrasal verb
:
pasar a manos de
- After the auction, the painting changed hands for a record price.
Although once I left and the government changed hands, they repealed all day kindergarten.
- Although once I left and the government changed hands, they repealed all day kindergarten.
- The velocity of money is how often a dollar changes hands per quarter.
- They're in the cloak room where the rules get written and the money changes hands.
- This would be on buses, you know, because again, there's no, no money has changed hands here.
- Oftentimes when paintings change hands across oceans, survive wars, a lot of the provenance can get lost.
- One, if it changes hands once, that's too much overhead.
- Watch them change hands and bring forth tiny Dip shiny gifts.
- He changed the, the, the not just the technological landscape, but he changed how money changes hands between people.
- The way most people know about Kids for Cash is about the cash is about the money that changed hands. Between Conaghan and Shiver Ella,
Examples
-
Here, millions of pesos change hands as prize animals are paraded, judged, and sold.
Academic text (1996) -
Nothing happened, no land was given away or money changed hands for a while.
Academic text (2016) -
- Well, it just changed hands.
-
And it just changed hands.
-
Whatever money changes hands is yours.
-
The money has changed hands.
-
For some reason, money is about to change hands, and she must count it out and handle it.
Fiction book (1996) -
The store has now changed hands since last December.
Academic text (2016) -
Money would change hands from time to time over the years.
Fiction book (1996) -
There's an awful lot of money that changes hands during an election cycle.
Blog text (8)
Synonyms
296
2.8
Give something to someone because you have to
266
6.8
To give property or rights to another person
241
3.4
To make someone else the owner of something
22
3.7
Give responsibility, control, or an object to another person
18
4.9
Give ownership of something to another person by signing papers
11
4.8
Give up rights or property by agreeing to it in writing
1
4.3
To move from one owner to another when people buy or sell it
To change the name on the official papers of a car or house
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
change + hands
The meaning 'to be sold or transferred to a new owner' follows directly from 'change' (to switch) combined with 'hands' used metaphorically for possession, so learners who know both words can often infer the transfer-of-ownership sense. However, 'hands' is a figurative use for ownership and the phrase functions idiomatically rather than as a strictly compositional phrase, so the relation is not fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Change hands shows a simple picture of an object moving from one person's hands into another person's hands. That's why it means 'to be sold' or 'passed to a new owner'.