Fingered

How to spell fingered

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fingered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fingered mean?

1. verbTouched, felt, or handled something with the fingers.
2. verbInformally, identified or named someone as responsible for a crime or wrongdoing.

Fingered in a sentence

• She nervously fingered the hem of her coat while she waited.

• A former associate fingered him as the one who leaked the documents.

• He fingered the fabric to judge its quality before buying.

• Two witnesses fingered the same man in the lineup.

Where does fingered come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'finger', which grew directly out of the noun 'finger', one of the oldest words in English. The noun descends from Old English 'finger', shared with Old Norse 'fingr', Dutch 'vinger' and German 'Finger', all from a Germanic root that may ultimately connect to the idea of 'five', linking the finger to the count of digits on the hand. The verb sense of touching or handling something with the fingers developed naturally from the noun and was in use by the medieval period. A later, more colloquial meaning, to point someone out as guilty or to inform on them, emerged in the twentieth century, drawing on the image of literally pointing a finger. The spelling trap is mild but real: the silent reflex is to wonder about the double 'g', yet 'finger' takes a single 'g' before the regular '-ed' ending.

How the word is built

• finger (the digit of the hand, from Old English finger)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)