thumb
/θʌm
/- This section passes through the four fingers, the thumb having been seen for the last time in the preceding section.
- Using both hands, each testicle should be gently rolled between the thumb and index finger to find any lumps or irregular areas.
- The forefeet have 5 digits, but the thumb is reduced in size. The hind feet have five functional digits.
- Its retractable, switchblade-like claws on its thumbs worked as grappling hooks to bring an animal to the ground, Wroe said.
- The top of the thumb is covered with nose friendly fabric so you can swipe away those tickles without rasping your shnoz.
- The thumb part of the glove should fold down underneath the fingers and point down.
- The intercom beeped on a console near the galley and Merlin moved to thumb the control.
- However, at 127 minutes and with a dialogue-heavy middle, some more impatient folk may be thumbing the scan forward button.
- Nakamura fished a cell phone from his pants pocket, and the device chirped as he thumbed the two-way communication button.
Synonyms
- ‘Well, I fix that thing,’ Dreyden said, thumbing towards the ship, ‘when no one else is around.’
- Debbie smirked at him and thumbed towards herself.
- ‘Cassie’ she said simply, thumbing in the direction of the window.
- Anyway, I am thumbing through the friendster pages via a search for ‘Interests: Blading’ in hope of finding some blading kakis.
- But who can deny perusing the headlines, even thumbing through the pages, of the occasional supermarket tabloid while waiting to ring up our groceries?
- After thumbing through a few pages, I was hooked immediately.
Synonyms
- I do so love my books, so much so that I couldn't bring myself to read books that had been thumbed a thousand times over.
- The smell and feel of them but books that have been thumbed through by hundreds and gone yellowy don't have quite the same appeal.
- In our own kids' bookshelves, they're the most battered, thumbed and falling-apart books, so often have they been read.
Synonyms
- And even if he found out where he was working out in Rio, he couldn't very well thumb a ride out there, could he?
- You could otherwise hope that a friendly soul at the Clachaig will offer a lift, or thumb a ride back: you would be unlucky if no-one stopped.
- Later, while filling his car radiator with water at a service station, he offers a lift to a young woman who is also trying to thumb a ride west.
Synonyms
Phrases
be all thumbs
thumb one's nose at
thumbs up (or down)
under someone's thumb
Derivatives
thumbless
- Pretty soon the clouds lifted and there in front of me were the peaks, soaring like a giant thumbless hand into the clouds.
- He was the one who talked filth to Laura Dern in Wild At Heart and more recently played a thumbless Canadian spy in The English Patient.
- With her fingers inside the thumbless muffs, she couldn't work the snaps, and that was so frustrating!
Origin
Old English thūma, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch duim and German Daumen, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin tumere 'to swell'. The verb dates from the late 16th century, first in the sense 'play (a musical instrument) with the thumbs'.
Like finger, thumb is Old English. It shares an ancient root with Latin tumere ‘to swell’, probably because the thumb is a ‘fat’ or ‘swollen’ finger. Thimble is formed from thumb, in the same way that handle is formed from hand. The expression thumbs up, showing satisfaction or approval, and its opposite thumbs down, indicating rejection or failure, hark back to the days of Roman gladiatorial combat. The thumbs were used to signal approval or disapproval by the spectators—despite what many people believe, though, they turned their thumbs down to indicate that a beaten gladiator had performed well and should be spared, and up to call for his death. The reversal of the phrases' meaning first appeared in the early 20th century. In one of the stories from Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), a Roman centurion facing a bleak future says to his friend, ‘We're finished men—thumbs down against both of us.’ In Shakespeare's Macbeth the Second Witch says as she sees Macbeth, ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes.’ A sensation of pricking in the thumbs was believed to be a foreboding of evil or trouble. See also limb, rule