Fingers

The old names for the fingers are—

Thumb (Anglo-Saxon thuma).

Towcher (the finger that touches), foreman, or pointer. This was called by the Anglo-Saxons the scite-finger, i.e. the shooting finger.

Long-man or long finger.

Lech-man or ring-finger. The former means “medical finger,” and the latter is a Roman expression, “digitus annularis.” Called by the Anglo-Saxons the gold-finger.

Little-man or little finger. Called by the Anglo-Saxons the eár-finger.

Fingers. Ben Jonson says -

The thumb, in chiromancy, we give to Venus:
The fore-finger to Jove; the midst to Saturn;
The ring to Sol, the least to Mercury

Alchemist, i. 2.

His fingers are all thumbs.

Said of a person awkward in the use of his hands. Ce sont les deux doigts de la main.

Fingers before Forks

This Vulcan was a smith, they tell us,
That first invented tongs and bellows;
For breath and fingers did their works
(We'd fingers long before we'd forks).

King: Art of Love.

Fingers' Ends

I have it at my fingers' ends. I am quite familiar with it and can do it readily. It is a Latin proverb (Scire tanquam ungues digitosq.), where the allusion is to the statuary, who knows every item of his subject by the touch. (See Unguem.)

Costard: Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.
Holofernes: O, I smell false Latin: dunghill for unguem.

—Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost, v. l.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894

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Fingers

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