Hi, friends,
For about 25 years, I've been trying to remember a latinate word which means the same thing as thumb-indexed, as of a dictionary. If you happen to know this word, PLEASE e-mail me at
penelopeschott@comcast.net. It's been driving me nuts. Thanks. p.
Hi Penelope,
Have you tried a reverse dictionary lookup? I don't have a link handy, but you could try googling "reverse dictionary" or wait for someone to answer that has a link handy.
Don't be a stranger (for long)...
Dear Penelope ~
Welcome to the fun house. I hope you stick around long enough to discover how much fun we really are.
Suggestion: edit your post to give your e-mail address as "penelopeschott AT comcast.net" as a way of preventing harvesters from lifting it from this board and targeting you with every imaginable bit of Spam.
www.onelook.com has a reverse dictionary.
welcome, penelope!
Alas, no luck. But I thank you for the suggestion. Best, p.
interesting that "index" comes from the Latin for "forefinger",
so a thumb-index....
so, anyway, something tumere? tumere digitus?
ain't web-searching fun?
fwiw Penelope, I used the Onelook reverse and entered <*ndex> to ensure capture of all variants. This nets more types of indices than you can shake a stick at, from “a index” to “zygomaticoauricular index” some 687 entries later!
Amongst them I found
tab index, which seems about right to me. Not Latinate, but is it close to what you had been thinking of?
Technical description
what Penelope describes as thumb indexes are, in fact, called thumb indexes. M-W Unabridged, which is thumb-indexed, refers to them as.. thumb indexes. I shall search OED for something Latinate; but I am not sanguine.
..no joy: thumb-index == thumb-register
The Latin for thumb is pollex, fwiw.
pollex?
from etymonline:
Quote:
thumb
O.E. žuma, from W.Gmc. *thuman- (cf. O.Fris. thuma, O.S., O.H.G. thumo, Ger. Daumen, Du. duim "thumb," O.N. žumall "thumb of a glove"), lit. "the stout or thick (finger)," from PIE *tum- "swell" (cf. L. tumere "to swell," tumidus "swollen;" Avestan tuma "fat;" see thigh).
he said the Latin for thumb was pollex; not that the word thumb came from pollex - in this case we opted for the O.H.G.N.D.Fris. žuma (or sumptin)
Meanwhile google determines our true search....
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thanks, tsu, for the clarification. damned language got in my way of understanding....
Latin pollex, pollicis, so pollic(o)- would be the combining form. Index means basically pointer (or he who points). Cf. judex 'judge' for law-giver.
In what list of words did I recently see one for the distance between thumb and forefinger?
No luck yet, but you all are certainly informative. Thanks. p.
Quote:
No luck yet, but you all are certainly informative. Thanks. p.
here's some more stuff mostly unrelated to your question:
-although pollex is sometimes applied to the big toe as well as the thumb, the distinctive term for that is hallux.
-pollex is also defined (by W3) as a unit of length equal to one inch -- used formerly in descriptions of invertebrate animals
-although these terms are used mostly in Anat. contexts, here's an actual literary usage of pollex:
She clutched her bag between index and pollex. - Anthony Burgess, MF
-pollical - Of or pertaining to the pollex or thumb
(pollically indexed?)
-pollicate - [Zool.] having thumbs
and, of course, desuperpollicate.
-in case you were wondering, pollicitate is completely unrelated, meaning the action of promising (fr. L. pollicitari, to promise)
pollicitari, to promise Police? Politician?
in case you were wondering, pollicitate is completely unrelated, meaning the action of promising (fr. L. pollicitari, to promise)
With our election looming it does feel like our poiticians are thumbing their noses at us.