When I was in elementary school I tried to start a protest during the break by getting on the desk and proclaiming that we need to stop the discrimination of the middle finger, it is a finger like the others and should be allowed to stand on its own just like the other fingers. Needless to say I held up my middle fingers during that passionate speech. I was also very sincere about it, not emotional, but I did find it unjust. I'm not sure where I am going with this but it was weighing on my chest for too long and needed to get out finally. Thanks for reading.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Why do you accept your pinky as a finger?
Yeah, that's classified as dwarf finger now.
What do you consider the thumb to be if not another finger?
Its a thumb. Its its own thing. If we had only ~~5~~ fingers we would be INFERIOR BEINGS
glares at spider monkies
Edit: apparently sponkeys have 4 fingers on their hands and thumbs on their feet
Nah it's the thumb finger, like the index finger etc. We have fully truncated it to just thumb because of how it feels more unique to the others. Doesn't mean it no longer fits the categorisation though.
We have fully truncated it to just thumb because of how it feels more unique to the others
Kinda like the goalie on a hockey team or the drummer in a band. Still on the team, just a bit weirder.
Yet, essential.
This is like the square/rectangle thing: "Not all fingers are thumbs, but all thumbs are fingers".
I swear one of these days I'm gonna dive into Wikipedia and find the name for that kinda relationship
I don't know if there's a better term, but a subset is what it is.
Except for some monkey thumbs that are toes... Apes are so clearly superior even in the thumb area
All of them are fingers. Thumbs are fingers, but a finger is not necessarily a thumb. I dont know where people get the idea that a thumb is not a finger. So many common sayings reinforce that it is. "Counting on your fingers (including your thumbs)", healthy babies have "Ten fingers, ten toes", "What did the five fingers say to the face... slap", "high five", "five finger discount", etc. Also, honorable mention to Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya searching for "the 6 fingered man" which includes his thumb. "Middle finger" is not the only thing that makes no sense if you don't accept that the thumb is a finger.
In almost every other language there isn't even a separate word for "thumb", it's just one of the fingers.
I don't think that's right? I know polish has a separate word, and sampling in Google translate seems to show separate words in German, french and Spanish. Maybe I got lucky and hit the exceptions, but it seems to commonly be a separate word.
I only know Japanese, but it is θ¦ͺζ (oya yubi) which means parent-finger.
Do other fingers get their own names in those languages, though? Or is thumb special, like in English?
Not sure about other languages, but in polish the thumb is "kciuk", while the rest are variants on finger - "palec wskazujΔ cy", "palec Εrodkowy"
Edit: checking google translate, German seems to be the same, with the thumb being a distinct word, and the rest being compound words of "finger"
I used to genuinely argue that it wasn't a finger bc it had only two segments, not three. I've since realized that there is a third and I'm fucking stupid.
Your original instinct was actually correct. Fingers have the metacarpal, proximal phalange, middle phalange, and distal phalange. The thumb doesn't have a middle phalange. The proximal and distal phalange connect directly to each other.
I may or may not have just started feeling up my hand while wiggling my fingers to check this
What's wrong with you?
It's pretty normal to count the thumb as a finger. I find it strange that you would not.
If you were asked "how many fingers do you have", would you answer 8, or 10? Surely, everyone knows the answer is 10 (assuming no physical abnormalities)? On a fingering chart, music will instruct you to play a note with your thumb with the number "1" and your pinky with the number "5".
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The thumb is thicker than other digits so naturally it'll be harder to accept. A lubricant may help but the key is to relax and go slow.
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You don't consider a thumb a finger? What is it then in your world? Tail?
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The thumb, the misunderstood tentacle.
An essay.
you count your pinky as a finger ? it is not a finger; it is a pinky.
with the thumb being a thumb and as we have previously discussed about pinky leaves three fingers and certainly a middle one
Well, it's not a toe.
I wonder if OP thinks the big toe isn't a toe...
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