Chapter Finger and Glove to First-class Hard Labour of F by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Finger and Glove to First-class Hard Labour

Finger and Glove To be finger and glove with another means to be most intimate.

Finger in the Pie To have a finger in the pie. To assist or mix oneself officiously in any matter. Esse rei particeps. In French, Mettro la main à la pâte.

Finger Benediction In the Greek and Roman Church the thumb and first two fingers represent the Trinity. The thumb, being strong, represents the Father; the long or second finger, Jesus Christ; and the first finger, the Holy Ghost, which proceedeth from the Father and the Son. (See Blessing.)
   Some bishops of the Anglican Church use this gesture while pronouncing the benediction.

Finger-stall A hutkin, a cover for a sore finger. The Germans call a thimble a finger-hut, where hut is evidently the word hut or huth (a tending, keeping, or guarding), from the verb huten (to keep watch over). Our hutkin is simply a little cap for guarding a sore finger. Stall is the Saxon stæl (a place), whence our stall, a place for horses.

Fingers The old names for the fingers are -
   Thumb (Anglo-Saxon thuma).
   Towcher (the finger that touches), foreman, or pointer. This was called by the Anglo-Saxons the scite-finger, i.e. the shooting finger.
   Long- man or long finger.
   Lech-man or ring-finger. The former means "medical finger," and the latter is a Roman expression, "digitus annularis." Called by the Anglo-Saxons the gold-finger.
   Little-man or little finger. Called by the Anglo-Saxons the eár-finger.
   Fingers. Ben Jonson says -

"The thumb, in chiromancy, we give to Venus:
The fore-finger to Jove; the midst to Saturn;
The ring to Sol, the least to Mercury"
Alchemist, i. 2.

   His fingers are all thumbs. Said of a person awkward in the use of his hands. Ce sont les deux doigts de la main.

Fingers before Forks

"This Vulcan was a smith, they tell us,
That first invented tongs and bellows;
For breath and fingers did their works
(We'd fingers long before we'd forks)."
King: Art of Love.

Fingers' Ends I have it at my fingers' ends. I am quite familiar with it and can do it readily. It is a Latin proverb (Scire tanquam ungues digitosq.), where the allusion is to the statuary, who knows every item of his subject by the touch. (See Unguem.)

   "Costard: Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.
   Holofernes: O, I smell false Latin: dunghill for unguem." - Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost, v. l.

Fingered
   The light-fingered gentry. Priggers, qui ungues hamatos et uncos habent.

Fingle-fangle (A). A ricochet word meaning a fanciful trifle. A "new fangle" is a novel contrivance. "New fangled," etc.

Finished to the Finger-nail or "ad unguem, " in allusion to statuaries running their finger-tips over a statue to detect if any roughness or imperfection of surface remains.

Finny Tribe Fish; so called because they are furnished with fins.

Finsbury (London). A corruption of Fens-bury, the town in the fens.

Fion son of Comnal, an enormous giant, who could place his feet on two mountains, and then stoop and drink from a stream in the valley between. (Gaelic legend.)

Fir-cone on the Thyrsus. The juice of the fir-tree (turpentine) used to be mixed by the Greeks with new wine to make it keep; hence it was adopted as one of the symbols of Bacchus.

Fir-tree (The). Atys was metamorphosed into a fir-tree by Cybele, as he was about to lay violent hands on himself. (Ovid Metamorphoses, x. fable 2.)