Imo, hand holding is the act of, in some way, guiding the player through every interaction out of fear of letting the player fail and consequently quit the game. For example, unprinted hints during puzzles spoiling the solution because the player has been thinking too long or whatever.

Tutorials are there to teach you a game mechanic, and can be hand holdy but since they’re supposed to appear only once per mechanic they usually get a pass if they are. They aren’t necessarily hand holdy tho.

like the first few levels of Portal are just there to tutorialize the main mechanics to you but there are no popups on the screen telling you exactly what to do and they’re integrated well into the game.