Hand type
Spatulate hand
Everything here reports what named old books claimed about hands. None of it is a statement about you or about anything to come.
In an older source
the palm, instead of having the squareness of the preceding type, is either unusually broad at the wrist or at the base of the fingers
Cheiro, The Language of the Hand (1897)
About this entry
The name comes from the chemist's spatula, as Cheiro 1897 explains, since the tip of each finger is said to resemble one. He also calls it the nervous active type. The palm matters as much as the tips, since it lacks the squareness of the type before it.
Cheiro describes two forms. If the greater breadth lies at the wrist, the palm narrows toward the fingers. If the greatest breadth lies at the base of the fingers, the hand slopes back toward the wrist. His Plate III shows the shape.
In d'Arpentigny's list, translated by Heron-Allen in 1886, the same hand is the Necessary or Spatulated hand. Benham 1900 keeps the spatulate tip as one of four fingertip classes, with the square, the conic and the pointed. He gave up calling a whole hand spatulate, because he found the practice confused students.
Where this text comes from
Statements credited to an older writer follow the scanned or typed text named here, and those writers often disagree. Modern practice is labeled as modern.
- Cheiro, The Language of the Hand (1897)
Retrieved 2026-11-09
- d'Arpentigny, The Science of the Hand, trans. Heron-Allen (1886)
Retrieved 2026-11-09
- William G. Benham, The Laws of Scientific Hand Reading (1900)
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Our own plain wording. Quoted lines keep the spelling of the scanned source.