a. A ring formerly worn on the thumb.
Often engraved with a seal, or inscribed with a posy.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., II. iv. 365. I could haue crept into any Aldermans Thumbe-Ring.
1639. Glapthorne, Wit in a Constable, IV. i. (1640), F ij. An Alderman … has no more Wit then the rest oth’ bench: what lies in’s thumbe-ring.
1714. Spect., No. 614, ¶ 8. The large Thumb Ring,… given her by her Husband, quickly recommends her to some wealthy Neighbour.
1754. J. Shebbeare, Matrimony (1766), I. 4. She was … none of your meagre thin Things, which … might have been drawn through an Alderman’s Thumb-Ring.
1877. Smith & Wace’s Dict. Chr. Biog., I. 728/1 (Cuthbert). A plain massive thumb-ring, with a sapphire set in it.
1877. W. Jones, Finger-ring, 28. A thumb-ring of unusual magnitude and of costly material.
attrib. 1642. Milton, Apol. Smect., iii. Instead of well siz’d periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumring posies.
b. A ring for the thumb on the guard of a dagger or sword; also each of a pair of rings on the hilt of a dagger by means of which it may be fastened to a staff.
1891. in Cent. Dict.
c. Archery. (See quot. 1893.)
[1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Larynx, A ring which the Turks put on their thumb for the drawing of their bows.]
1893. Smithsonian Rep., 637. Thumb ring, a ring worn on the thumb in archery by those peoples that use the Mongolian release; called sefin by the Persians.
1907. Payne-Gallwey, Projectile-Throwing Engines, II. 12. I can bend a strong bow much easier and draw it a great deal farther with the Turkish thumb-ring than I can with the ordinary European finger-grip.
