Definition
A handsale is a contract of sale perfected by the physical act of the parties shaking hands, historically regarded among northern European peoples as the gesture necessary to bind a bargain. Over time, the term acquired a second, related meaning: the earnest money or token payment given immediately upon the handshake — or in place of it — to confirm the transaction.
1. The act of sale: A verbal or informal sale concluded by the mutual clasping or shaking of hands (Latin: venditio per mutuam manuum complexionem), without written instrument, treated as legally binding in customary law.
2. The earnest or consideration: The sum or token delivered at the moment of the handshake as symbolic confirmation of the completed bargain — functionally equivalent to earnest money in later commercial usage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Listed only as an alternative form of "handsel" — a gift given at the start of a new year or new undertaking; a token of good luck.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Handsel" — the first money received for goods sold, or the first use of anything, regarded as a token or omen of what is to follow.
The gap matters: Common usage collapses handsale into handsel, treating both as variants of the same luck-token concept. Legally, handsale carries the distinct meaning of a completed act of sale or its confirming consideration — not merely a gift or omen. A researcher who reads handsale as a synonym for handsel risks misunderstanding a passage that describes a legally operative transaction.
Common Confusion
HANDSALE vs. HANDSEL: These terms share a root and are sometimes treated as interchangeable in historical texts, but they serve different functions. Handsel is primarily a gift or inaugural payment; handsale is either the mode of contracting a sale or the earnest that seals it. In legal sources, handsale is the operative term. In literary and folk usage, handsel dominates. Burrill draws the distinction by grounding handsale firmly in Gothic law and the specific ceremony of mutual hand-clasping as a legal act.
HANDSALE vs. EARNEST: In its second meaning, handsale overlaps with earnest money — a part-payment given to bind a contract. The distinction is that earnest money survives as a live concept in modern contract and property law, while handsale belongs almost entirely to historical and comparative legal usage. The two terms converge in meaning but diverge sharply in currency.
Why It Matters in Research
Handsale is a term of historical and comparative legal significance rather than active modern doctrine. Researchers encounter it primarily in three contexts:
First, in historical property and contract sources. Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Comm. 448) is the anchor citation across all dictionary entries. Any corpus document invoking handsale in a legal argument is almost certainly drawing on Blackstone or a source derived from him. The term's appearance in a document is therefore a dating and tradition signal — it points toward common law antiquarianism, customary law discussion, or early Anglo-American contract commentary.
Second, in comparative and Germanic legal history. Burrill alone among the standard dictionaries grounds handsale explicitly in Gothic law, citing Stiernhook's De Jure Gothorum. Researchers tracing the Germanic or Scandinavian roots of Anglo-American contract formalities will find handsale a useful entry point into the literature on oral contract ceremony, along with related concepts like the Roman stipulatio and the English livery of seisin.
Third, as a doctrinal ancestor. The handshake as a binding gesture persists in modern informal contract culture — courts occasionally reference it in discussing the formation of oral contracts or the sufficiency of informal agreement. While no modern court is likely to use the word handsale, the underlying concept (an act of the body as a contracting gesture) remains theoretically relevant to discussions of offer and acceptance, part performance, and the enforceability of oral agreements.
Watch for spelling variation in historical documents: handsale, hand-sale, and hand sale all appear, and the term may be conflated with or substituted by handsel without the author distinguishing their legal significance.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries reproduce nearly identical text, tracing directly to Blackstone. This uniformity is itself informative: it indicates that by the time Black's and Bouvier's were compiled, handsale had no independent doctrinal life and was preserved purely as a historical gloss on Blackstone's passage about informal sale. There is no divergence among the authorities on substance — only Burrill adds the comparative dimension by citing Stiernhook and identifying the term as belonging to Gothic law specifically.
None of the historical dictionaries address what evidentiary or legal weight a handsale would have carried in American courts, because by the time American legal dictionaries were written, the custom had no active application. Bouvier's fragmentary entry suggests the term may have had some regional currency ("In some parts of the countr—"), but the text is cut off and no American authority is supplied. This gap means researchers should not assume handsale ever functioned as a recognized legal category in American courts.
Jurisdictional Note
Handsale has no recognized application in modern American, English, or Commonwealth law. Its significance is historical and comparative. Researchers working in Scandinavian legal history or early Germanic customary law may find the term in active doctrinal use within those traditions, where the hand-clasp ceremony had formal legal status distinct from its role in English common law.