the amount of something that you can hold in one hand in English:

That boy is a handful.

He scooped up sand by the handful.

There are a handful of naughty boys in my neighborhood.

The boy gathered a handful of peanuts and put them in a small box.

handful of sth

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

Only a handful of activists are articulate in our union.

Think of your opponent as nothing more than a handful of ash.

The difficulties of the Japanese language prevent all but a handful of foreigners from approaching the literature in the original.

handful of giant companies are engaged in a “silent takeover” of the world.

She invited all her friends to her party, but only a handful of them turned up.

These companies are only a handful among the more than 150 in Government hands

"But won't they think us rather a handful?"

Psychologist Eric Uhlmann, from the Paris School of Management, has done a handful of studies that picked apart how differently people feel about different kinds of money

A handful of volunteers has been involved in the research.