thumby

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈθʌmi/

• Audio (AU)

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Etymology 1

From thumb +‎ -y/-ie (diminutive suffix).

Noun

thumby (plural thumbies)

1. (slang) A little thumb; diminutive term for thumb

Synonyms

• pollex
• thumb

See also

• pointling

Etymology 2

From thumb +‎ -y.

Adjective

thumby (comparative thumbier, superlative thumbiest)

1. Clumsy, awkward, maladroit, not dextrous, all thumbs
   • 1896, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 29, in The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine‎^[1], Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co:

     "Well, I don't tease anybody but the men. I don't tease father or mother or you,—but men are fair game; they are such thumby, blundering creatures, and we can confuse them so."

   • 1904, H.G. Wells, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth‎^[2], Book I, Chapter 1:

     […] he was propounding an improvement of Professor Armstrong's Heuristic method, whereby at the cost of three or four hundred pounds' worth of apparatus, a total neglect of all other studies and the undivided attention of a teacher of exceptional gifts, an average child might with a peculiar sort of thumby thoroughness learn in the course of ten or twelve years almost as much chemistry as one could get in one of those objectionable shilling text-books that were then so common….

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter IX, in Capricornia‎^[3], New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, pages 147–8:

     The box was set down, the stiff buckles of its mildewed straps tackled by a dozen thumby hands, the lid hurled back.

   • 1983, Richard Schickel, chapter 1, in Cary Grant: A Celebration, New York: Hachette, published 2009:

     For as long as we have known him—and for most of us that has been for the lengths of our lifetimes—he has been the object of, and inspiration for, a delight so innocent and perfect that the attempt to analyse its sources seems an act of ingratitude, a laying on of thumby hands that will inevitably bollix the job.

   • 2006, Robert Schmuhl, In So Many Words: Arguments and Adventures‎^[4], University of Notre Dame Press, page 160:

     Some people are handy, but I am (no other word fits) thumby.
     The handy learn to master each moder machine as soon as it hits the market. The thumby never graduate beyond the self-service island at the gas station.

   • 2015, Julie Lawson, A Ribbon of Shining Steel: The Railway Diary of Kate Cameron, Yale, British Columbia, 1882, Dear Canada series, Scholastic Canada, [5]

     Rachel was all thumbs when it came to embroidery, even thumbier than me.

2. Dirtied by thumb marks
   • 1914, H.G. Wells, “The Philosopher's Public Library”, in Social Forces in England and America‎^[6], New York & London: Harper & Bros., page 203:

     He would distinguish, too, between a library and a news-room, and would find no great attraction in the prospect of supplying the national youth with free but thumby copies of the sixpenny magazines.