[f. FINGER v. + -ING1.]
1. The action of the vb. FINGER in various senses.
c. 1450. Bk. Curtasye, 249, in Babees Bk. (1868), 306.
| Bekenyng, fynguryng, non þou vse, | |
| And pryué rownyng loke þou refuse. |
1553. T. Wilson, Rhet. (1580), 144. As when one hath … got his livyng with light fingeryng.
1567. Drant, Horace Epist., B j. Measure the lawe of sounde by fingering, or by eare.
1621. Sanderson, Serm., I. 214. Uzza had better have ventured the falling, than the fingering of the ark, though it tottered.
1760. Impostors Detected, I. 251. He shall not have the fingering of her any more than myself.
1818. Jas. Mill, Brit. India (1840), I. I. iii. 80. The Directors, however, had expected the fingering of the money, and they advanced reasons why it should be immediately placed in their hands.
1872. O. W. Holmes, Poet Breakf.-t., i. (1885), 28. In parchment covers browned like a meerschaum with the smoke of furnaces and the thumbing of dead gold-seekers, and the fingering of bony-handed book-misers.
† b. Work done with the fingers. Cf. FINGER v. 6.
1590. Spenser, Muiopotmos, 366.
| Nor anie skil’d in loupes of fingring fine, | |
| Might in their divers cunning ever dare, | |
| With this so curious networke to compare. |
2. Mus. a. The action of using the fingers in playing upon an instrument; the proper method of doing this.
c. 1385. Chaucer, L. G. W., Prol. 89.
| My worde, my werkes, ys knyt so in youre bonde | |
| That as an harpe obeieth to the honde, | |
| That maketh it soune after his fyngerynge. |
1545. Ascham, Toxoph. (Arb.), 39. Instrumentes euery one, whyche standeth by fine and quicke fingeringe, be condemned by Aristotle, as not to be brought in and vsed amonge them, whiche studie for learning and vertue.
1593. Pass. Morrice, 78. Shee tooke her lute, singing to her fingering this sonnet.
1674. Playford, Skill Mus., II. 103. In the Rule of true Fingering, where you skip a Fret, there leave a Finger.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, I.
| I learnt much music,—such as would have been | |
| As quite impossible in Johnson’s day | |
| As still it might be wished—fine sleights of hand | |
| And unimagined fingering, shuffling off | |
| The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes | |
| To a noisy Tophet. |
b. The indication, by figures set against the notes of a piece of music, of the way in which the fingers are to be used in its performance.
1879. Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 527/2. The earliest German fingering … was precisely the same as the present English system, except that the thumb was indicated by a cypher instead of a cross.
3. attrib.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 1252. I am better acquainted with the fingring Musicke & manuall practise than otherwise.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 255.
| All the Politics of the Great | |
| Are like the Cunning of a Cheat, | |
| That lets his false Dice freely run, | |
| And trusts them to themselves alone; | |
| But never lets a true one stir | |
| Without some fing’ring Trick or Slur. |
1883. Blackie, The Philosophy of the Beautiful, in Contemporary Review, XLIII. June, 814. Not from any fingering induction of external details, but from “the inspiration of the Almighty,” cometh all true understanding in matters of religion, morals, and beauty.
