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Reader question: Please explain “glad hand” in this sentence: They give him the glad hand in public and curse his name privately. My comments: They shake hands with him in public, saying “Glad to meet you” and so forth but the next moment they’re cursing him with closed teeth. The glad hand is there to help keep appearances. In actual fact, they hate this guy. To give someone the glad hand is an American idiom. Like many American idioms, this one is easy to understand. Well, kind of. Perhaps not so easy to the Chinese. Glad hand doesn’t even sound grammatically sound, right? Well, that’s the thing with us Chinese learners. We are always questioning grammar when we should perhaps just follow the lead of the natives and say anything they say without any fuss. I mean, that’ll definitely save some trouble on our part. Anyways, glad hand is an American idiom that’s been accepted into the language since the 1980s, according to Dictionary.com. It was probably inspired by the fact that when people meet the first time, they shake hands and say heartily “Glad to meet you.” Hands are hands – they cannot be happy or sad. Hence, it’s the owners of those hands that are glad. So you see, glad hands can be deceptive, in addition to the fact it is grammatically unsound to the foreign ear. They shake your hand and say nice things with a twinkling eye, but they may not mean it, as our example from the top demonstrates. In fact, politicians do this a lot. During political campaigns, people who are running for office are often seen glad-handing (yes, it can be used as a verb as well – and why not, since its noun form doesn’t make much grammatical sense in the first place) everyone they meet. They show the same glowing happiness and enthusiasm when they shake hands with anyone, foes, allies alike, and perfect strangers likewise, no matter. It’s just the right thing to do. Or let’s say they’re just being politically correct, since we are talking about pro pols. | 
