Handshake — Meaning & Origins

Quick answer

The handshake, gripping and briefly shaking another's hand, symbolizes trust, agreement, and peaceful greeting, with documented origins stretching back thousands of years, though its etiquette and even acceptability vary significantly by culture.

The handshake — gripping and briefly shaking another person's right hand — is one of the oldest documented gestures on this site, with depictions found on ancient artefacts thousands of years old, and it remains the default greeting and agreement-sealing gesture across much of the world today, particularly in business and formal contexts. Yet it's far from universal, and the specific customs around grip strength, duration, and even which hand is offered vary significantly by culture, making the 'simple' handshake a genuine source of cross-cultural etiquette mistakes. This guide covers the handshake's ancient origins, its role as a trust signal, and where its meaning and appropriateness shift most across the world.

Meaning & Origin

The handshake's core symbolic meaning has remained remarkably stable across an extraordinarily long history: an offered, empty right hand as a demonstration of peaceful intent, historically theorised to have originated as a way to show that neither party was concealing a weapon, with the subsequent shake sometimes explained as an additional check, meant to dislodge any hidden blade up a sleeve. While these explanations are widely repeated, historians treat them as plausible rather than definitively proven, since documented evidence of the gesture's exact original purpose is limited.

What is well documented is the handshake's remarkable age: a ninth-century BCE relief from ancient Assyria depicts a handshake between a king and a foreign ruler, and additional evidence from ancient Greek funerary art shows handshakes being exchanged in scenes symbolising farewell or the transition to the afterlife, indicating the gesture already carried meanings of trust, alliance, or solemn transition well over two and a half thousand years ago. The handshake also has documented roots as a gesture of formal, binding agreement — historically used, alongside spoken oaths, to seal contracts, treaties, and business deals in various European trading and merchant traditions, with the phrase 'shake on it' still reflecting that binding, agreement-sealing function today.

The handshake became especially entrenched as the default Western greeting and business gesture from roughly the seventeenth century onward, promoted in part by Quaker communities in England who favoured it as a simpler, more egalitarian alternative to the elaborate bowing and hat-doffing customs of the era, which were seen by Quakers as reinforcing class hierarchy. From this base the handshake spread through European trade, colonialism, and eventually globalised business culture to become one of the most internationally recognised gestures of greeting and agreement in the world, though, as the cultural variation entries below make clear, it is genuinely not a universal or default greeting everywhere, and assuming it is can itself be a cultural misstep.

Cultural Variations

Western business and diplomatic tradition

The default formal greeting and agreement-sealing gesture, expected in most professional and diplomatic contexts across Europe, the Americas, and much of the globalized business world, with a firm (but not crushing) grip and brief eye contact widely considered the etiquette standard, though exact expectations still vary somewhat by country.

Japan and parts of East Asia

While handshakes have become common in international business contexts in Japan and other East Asian countries, the traditional and still widely preferred greeting, especially in more formal or traditional settings, is the bow, whose depth and duration itself carries meaning about the relative status and respect between the people involved. Visitors are often advised to let their Japanese counterpart initiate a handshake if one occurs, rather than assuming it as the default.

Quaker tradition (historical, England)

Seventeenth-century English Quakers notably favored the handshake specifically as an egalitarian alternative to bowing, hat-doffing, and other status-marking greeting customs of the era, viewing those older gestures as reinforcing class hierarchy in ways inconsistent with Quaker beliefs about spiritual equality. Their consistent use of the handshake is credited by some historians with helping entrench it as a default greeting in English-speaking culture more broadly.

Where This Gesture Can Cause Offense

The same gesture can be friendly in one country and deeply rude in another. If you travel, these are worth knowing:

  • Contexts where physical touch between genders is restricted: In some conservative religious and cultural contexts, including certain interpretations of Islamic and Orthodox Jewish practice, physical contact between unrelated men and women, including handshakes, may be avoided for reasons of modesty. Offering a handshake without waiting to see if it's welcomed can put the other person in an uncomfortable position; a nod or hand-to-heart gesture is a safer default if unsure.
  • A limp or overly aggressive grip (etiquette, not offense, in Western business culture): While not offensive in a cultural sense, a notably weak or a crushing, overly forceful handshake is widely read in Western and especially American business etiquette as a negative signal about the other person's confidence or character, a piece of etiquette lore taken quite seriously in professional contexts.

Handshake — FAQ

What does a handshake symbolize?
Trust, agreement, and peaceful greeting. It's historically theorized to have originated as a way to show an empty, weapon-free hand, though this explanation isn't definitively proven by historical evidence.
How old is the handshake gesture?
Extremely old — a 9th-century BCE Assyrian relief depicts a handshake between a king and a foreign ruler, and ancient Greek funerary art also shows the gesture, indicating it's over two and a half thousand years old.
Is the handshake a universal greeting?
No. In Japan and much of East Asia, bowing remains the preferred traditional greeting, and in some conservative religious contexts, physical contact between unrelated men and women, including handshakes, may be avoided.
Why did Quakers favor the handshake?
17th-century English Quakers preferred it as an egalitarian alternative to bowing and hat-doffing, customs they saw as reinforcing class hierarchy, and their consistent use helped entrench it as a default Western greeting.