Dictionaries › English

thumb

Pronunciation: /ˈθʌm/

The English word “thumb” has 11 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The shortest and thickest digit of the hand that for humans has the most mobility and can be made to oppose (moved to touch) all of the other fingers.
  2. The part of a slider that may be moved linearly along the slider.
  3. A thumbnail picture.
  4. A top hatch plate for covering an excavator bucket, used to keep material in the digger bucket after scooping it up, and not letting it spill out.

verb

  1. To touch or cover with the thumb.
  2. To turn the pages of (a book) in order to read it cursorily.
  3. To gesture with the thumb, for example when flagging a ride.
  4. To hitchhike.
  5. To soil or wear with the thumb or the fingers; to soil, or wear out, by frequent handling.
  6. To manipulate (an object) with the thumb; especially, to pull back the hammer or open the cylinder of a revolver.
  7. To fire (a single action revolver) quickly by pulling the hammer while keeping the trigger depressed.

Etymology

Derived from Middle English thombe, thoume, thoumbe (“thumb”), from Old English þūma (“thumb”), from Proto-West Germanic *þūmō (“thumb”), from Proto-Germanic *þūmô (“thumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *tūm- (“to grow”). Cognate with West Frisian tomme (“thumb”), Dutch duim (“thumb”), Low German Duum (“thumb”), German Daumen (“thumb”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk tomme (“inch”),…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “thumb” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.