[f. prec. sb. Cf. Ger. fingern.]
† 1. trans. To point at with the finger. Obs.
c. 1450. [see FINGERING vbl. sb. 1].
1483. Cath. Angl., 131/2. To Finger, digitare.
2. To hold or turn about in one’s fingers; to put one’s fingers upon, touch with the fingers; also, to do this repeatedly or restlessly.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., III. ii. 6.
| As Ladies wont, in pleasures wanton lap, | |
| To finger the fine needle and nyce thread; | |
| Me leuer were with point of foemans speare be dead. |
1690. Dryden, Don Sebastian, III. ii. Mor. You would fain be fingering your rents beforehand.
1762. Goldsm., Cit. W., cii. In China, our women, except upon some great days, are never permitted to finger a dice-box.
1853. C. Kingsley, Hypatia, vii. 92. Philammon, fingering curiously the first coins which he ever had handled.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., xiii. (1889), 126. The St. Ambrose crew fingered their oars, put a last dash of grease on their rollocks, and settled their feet against the stretchers.
1870. Mod. Hoyle, 46. To finger the squares of the [chess-]board whilst planning your move is strictly legal but a most villanous habit.
1887. R. N. Carey, Uncle Max, xxx. 244. Pandora was forever opening her box in those days: she was never weary of fingering her silks and satins.
fig. 1883. T. H. Green, Proleg. Ethics, § 297. To be always fingering one’s motives is a sign rather of an unwholesome preoccupation with self than of the eagerness in disinterested service which helps forward mankind.
b. To touch or handle (money) with unworthy motives. † Also absol.
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, xxxvii. 159. They [the Romains] fell to fingering [context speaks of ‘receiuing giftes and rewarde’].
1651. Jer. Taylor, Serm. for Year, I. xxi. 264. It is a huge dishonour in the sincereity of a mans purposes to be too busie in fingring money in the matters of religion.
1884. Tennyson, Becket, I. iii. 55.
| This Almoner hath tasted Henry’s gold. | |
| The cardinals have finger’d Henry’s gold. | |
| And Rome is venal ev’n to rottenness. |
† c. To lay hands upon, apprehend (a person). Also to handle roughly, ‘claw.’ Obs.
1624. Sir R. Aldworth, Let., 27 Dec., in Lismore Papers (1888), Ser. II. III. 136. The two Releeuers feighin [Fagan] and lyney [Leyne] I knowe and Dout not but to finger on Thursday next.
1670. W. Walker, Idiomat. Anglo-Lat., 200. How would I finger him! Quibus illum lacerarem modis!
3. intr. To make restless or trifling movements with the fingers (const. at); also, to play or toy with. † To finger for: (fig.) to grope for, hanker after.
1655. Gurnall, Chr. in Arm., xi. (1669), 130/1. Thy heart is fingering for more of these than God allows thee.
1816. L. Hunt, Rimini, II. 119.
| Bending they stood, with their old foreheads bare, | |
| And the winds fingered with their reverend hair. |
1858. Kingsley, Poems, Sappho, 22.
| Then peevishly she flung her on her face, | |
| And hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare, | |
| And fingered at the grass. |
1869. Tennyson, Pelleas & Ettarre, 433.
| Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame | |
| Creep with his shadow thro’ the court again, | |
| Fingering at his sword-handle. |
4. trans. To lay the fingers upon or touch with a view to plunder; to pilfer, filch. Also const. from: To take or remove fraudulently from.
1530. Palsgr., 550/2. Beware of hym, for all that he can fyngar gothe with hym.
1577–87. Holinshed, Chron., III. 1136/1. So likewise did the Spanish soldiors, an the rest that could come to finger anie thing of value.
1593. Shaks., 3 Hen. VI., V. i. 44.
| But whiles he thought to steale the single Ten, | |
| The King was slyly finger’d from the Deck. |
1655. Fuller, The Church-History of Britain, III. ii. § 6. His Predecessors since the Conquest grasp’d it fast in their fist, in defiance of such Popes as would finger it from them.
1693. Mem. Ct. Teckely, I. 17. The Troops … took away all they could finger without paying for it.
† b. To cheat (a person) out of (a thing).
1709. Brit. Apollo, II. No. 70. 2/2. Meeting with three Thornbacks one Evening in my Walks, I could not stifle my Prosperity, but heavily treated them with a Pint or two, and they as artfully finger’d me out of five Guineas.
5. To play upon (an instrument) with the fingers.
1515. Barclay, Egloges, iv. (1570), C iij/2.
| Yet coulde he pipe and finger well a drone, | |
| But soure is musike when men for hunger grone. |
1603. Drayton, Odes, I. 61.
| Though wee be All to seeke, | |
| Of PINDAR that Great Greeke, | |
| To Finger it [the harp or lyre] aright, | |
| The Soule with power to strike, | |
| His hand retayn’d such Might. |
1641. Evelyn, Mem. (1857), I. 27. I found one who play’d all sorts of compositions from the tablature before him, as if he had fingered an organ.
1873. C. Keene, Let., in G. S. Layard, Life, vii. (1892), 152. I made a dummy bagpipe chanter (with large holes); that I carried in my pocket and fingered on every possible occasion, as I walked home at night, etc.!
b. To play (a passage of music) with the fingers used in a given way (where there is a choice of methods of execution).
c. To mark (a piece of music) with figures indicating the fingers with which the notes are to be played.
1816. Gentl. Mag., June, 539/2. In his ‘demonstration’ book, all the lessons are sufficiently fingered.
1891. Times, 22 Oct., 14/2. The latest issues … of Bach’s organ works … are carefully edited and fingered.
6. To manipulate with the fingers, ‘to perform any work exquisitely with the fingers’ (J.); fig. to elaborate, bestow minute labour on. Also with up. rare.
1816. J. Gilchrist, Philosophic Etymology, 185. If they can finger up, or arrange words into such soft, smooth, pretty, insignificant composition as that of Dr. Blair or Dugald Stewart. Ibid., 234. Addison’s composition, the model of the middle style, is, in the Italian manner, very intricate, and as it were, carelessly irregular, (as meretricious charmers affect a careless, easy manner); but nevertheless much-laboured and fingered.
† 7. Finger out: a. To read carefully or with effort, passing the finger along the lines. b. To point out as with the finger. Obs.
1680. Jenkins, in Mansel, Narr. Popish Plot, 101. He received all the Tryals that were printed, and had fingerd them out.
1767. W. Hanbury, Charities Ch.-Langton, 134.
| And amity of Dunce with Dunce, | |
| Fingers out Genius all at once. |
8. Finger up (nonce-use): intr. to run up in finger-like extensions.
1854. J. D. Hooker, Himalayan Journals, I. xi. 264. Promontories and peninsulas, between which the misty ocean seemed to finger up like the fiords of Norway.
Hence Fingerable a. rare, that can be fingered. Fingerative a., apt to ‘finger,’ thievish. Fingerer, one who fingers; esp. a pilferer, thief.
1561. Awdelay, Frat. Vacab., 8. A Fyngerer, an olde beaten childe, not onely in such deceites, but also such a one as by his age is painted out with gray heares, wrinkled face, crooked back, and most commonly lame, as it might seeme with age.
1674. Josselyn, Voy. New Eng., 125. [The Indians are] very fingurative or thievish, and bold importunate beggars.
1891. G. du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson, in Harper’s Mag., LXXXIII. Aug., 383/1. Four strings; but not the fingerable strings of Stradivarius.
1893. Henry James, The Middle Years, in Scribner’s Mag., XIII. May, 614/2. Dencombe was a passionate corrector, a fingerer of style; the last thing he ever arrived at was a form final for himself. His ideal would have been to publish secretly, and then, on the published text, treat himself to the terrified revise, sacrificing always a first edition and beginning for the world with the second.
