Other forms: fingernails
A fingernail is the hard covering at the end of a finger. Bite your fingernails, a broken fingernail, dirt under the fingernail.
It grows about three millimetres a month, roughly three times faster than a toenail, and faster on the hand you use most. It is made of keratin, the same material as hair, and the white half-moon at the base is the growing part showing through.
1nounfingernailThe hard covering at the end of a finger.
“She scratched the silver panel off the lottery card with her fingernail.”
fingernail is a body part.
Finger plus nail, in Middle English. Old English had handnaegl for the same thing.
Middle English
finger neiles
English, today
fingernail
From Middle English finger neiles; equivalent to finger + nail. Compare Middle English nayl of fynger (“fingernail”) and Old English handnæġl (“fingernail”). Compare also stq Fingernail (“fingernail”), West Frisian fingerneil (“fingernail”), Dutch vingernagel (“fingernail”), German Fingernagel (“fingernail”), Danish fingernegl (“fingernail”), Swedish fingernagel (“fingernail”), Norwegian fingernegl (“fingernail”), Icelandic fingurnögl (“fingernail”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA