> as lemmas

1538 L. Ridley Expos. Epist. Iude sig. F.viii What worshyp or veneracyon of images haue they sucked oute of their fyngers for money.

1572 E. Cradock Shippe of Assured Safetie ii. xii. 227 Neither had that chosen vessell the Apostle, sucked that holesome lesson out of his own fingers, but rather long before lerned it of our sauior Christ.

1626 R. Bolton Some Gen. Direct. for Comfortable Walking with God (ed. 2) 132 Forget it out of a suspicious selfe-guiltinesse in their owne profane fancies, and suck it, as they say, out of their own fingers.

1832 J. B. Inglis tr. R. de Bury Philobiblon x. 69 Aristotle.., who sucked those wonderful volumes out of his own fingers.

1886 Westm. Rev. Oct. 458 Religious founders..have only taken advantage of current ideas and not sucked them out of their fingers.

1901 Freedom Jan. 3/1 Their public..swallows anything the most ignorant journalist sucks out of his fingers.

1979 Guardian 30 July 13/8 Farmers cannot suck new technology out of their fingers.

2000 C. Rosenfarb Bociany vii. 143 The Sexton had obviously not sucked his stories entirely out of his finger.

2011 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 16 Apr. (International section) a4/5 She appealed to journalists not to ‘suck news out of your finger, but analyze the process on the basis of facts and data which were presented in the trial’.