thumbs

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of thumb.

   The climber's thumbs ached after hours of gripping the rock face.

   She wrapped both thumbs in tape before the boxing match.

   Note

   One spelling serves every kind of thumb. The plural covers the digits of the hands, the movable parts of sliders, the top plates that keep material in an excavator bucket, and, in casual online talk, thumbnail pictures (a page of thumbs to click through). The same letters also spell the present-tense verb: in "she thumbs" the word is a verb, but in "her thumbs" it is the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of thumb.

   The librarian thumbs through the catalog looking for the missing title.

   Every morning he thumbs the worn pages of his old journal.

   Note

   Behind the -s form sits a surprisingly wide verb. Someone who thumbs a book is leafing through it quickly. Someone who thumbs along a highway is hitchhiking. A gunfighter who thumbs a revolver is drawing back its hammer, or firing by working the hammer while the trigger stays down. With reading matter, the object can come directly (he thumbs the pages) or after through (he thumbs through the catalog).

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