thumby
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ˈθʌmi/
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Etymology 1
[edit]From thumb + -y/-ie (diminutive suffix).
Noun
[edit]thumby (plural thumbies)
Synonyms
[edit]See also
[edit]Etymology 2
[edit]Adjective
[edit]thumby (comparative thumbier, superlative thumbiest)
- 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.
- 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.