A hanky (also called a handkerchief) is a small square piece of cloth that people carry in their pockets or purses. Traditionally, people used hankies to wipe their noses, dab their eyes, or clean their hands when water wasn't available.

Before disposable tissues became common in the 1920s, nearly everyone carried a hanky. Your great-great-grandparents probably owned dozens of them, washing and reusing the same ones for years. Today, paper tissues have mostly replaced cloth hankies for blowing noses, but many people still carry them as a practical tool or as a stylish accessory that adds a pop of color peeking out of a suit pocket.

The word hanky is simply a shortened, friendlier version of handkerchief. You might read in an old story about someone “waving a white hanky” as a signal or “dabbing their eyes with a hanky” while crying. Some magicians still use silk hankies in their tricks, making them disappear or pulling an impossibly long chain of them from a hat.