thumbing

Pluralthumbings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of thumb.

   He spent the afternoon thumbing through dusty library volumes.

   Thumbing a ride home, she waited at the edge of the highway.

   Note

   The verb form behind most everyday uses: thumbing through a book, thumbing a ride, thumbing back a revolver's hammer. As a gerund it keeps the verb's direct object, as in thumbing the pages wore them thin. The noun of handling needs of instead: the thumbing of the pages. The hitchhiking sense can stand without an object (she spent the summer thumbing). The page-turning and handling senses normally take one.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The action of handling, pressing, or turning something with the thumb.

   Years of thumbing had darkened the edges of the old prayer book.

   A brisk thumbing of the catalog turned up the part number at once.

   Similarhandling, fingering, leafing, browsing

   Note

   A noun that can be counted as well as massed. Isaac Disraeli, in Amenities of Literature (1842), writes of the "thumbings" that precious autographs suffered from the book-holder or prompter, each handling adding its wear. The plural suits that idea of repeated, damaging contact. The singular, as in years of thumbing, names the habit itself. Unlike the gerund of the verb thumb, this noun takes the and of: the thumbings of a script.

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