FINGERPOST

PRONUNCIATION: (FING-guhr-post)

MEANING: noun:
1. A post with one or more signs pointing toward one or more places.
2. Something or someone serving as a guide.

ETYMOLOGY: From the resemblance of the sign to the fingers of a hand. Earliest documented use: 1738.

NOTES: A fingerpost is a post with long thin boards pointing toward various locations. These boards may look like fingers on a hand, hence the name. Sometimes these boards actually terminate in a pointing finger. The Oxford English Dictionary lists another sense of the word fingerpost: a parson or a member of the clergy. As this citation from the A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785 tells it:
“Finger post, a parson, so called, because like the finger post, he points out a way he probably will never go, i.e. the way to heaven.
______________________________

SINGERPOST - my job as resident vocal soloist

FINGERPEST - someone with a very low threshold for flipping people the bird...

GINGERPOST - an extremely tentative Facebook entry