This is like the square/rectangle thing: "Not all fingers are thumbs, but all thumbs are fingers".
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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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.
Nailed it.
In that case use clippers and a small sanding stick.
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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You don't consider a thumb a finger? What is it then in your world? Tail?
a digit
There are ten digits in our numeral system, and the thumb is neither a 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Which I find hard to accept.
How?
Probably because of its unique structure. It is slightly different than the rest of your fingers. I wouldn't consider it different enough to exclude it from being a finger though.
Its more of a finger than a finger is a thumb
What's wrong with you?
The thumb, the misunderstood tentacle.
An essay.
"middle finger" is "the finger in the middle of the digits" not "the finger on the middle of the fingers"
Why do you accept your pinky as a finger?
Yeah, that's classified as dwarf finger now.
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.
Oh yeah? Well π
If you had to pick either one of those fingers to call the "middle" one, it's pretty obvious which one better fits the description.
You have three fingers named fingers.
Index finger, ring finger and middle finger. The middle finger is in the middle of the three. Thumb and pinky are both outliers.
I have always known it as the "Pinky Finger" myself.
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