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fingertip

US/ˈfɪŋɡɚˌtɪp/
nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: fingertips

The fingertip is the very end of a finger, where the print is. The most sensitive skin on the body.

It has an extraordinary density of nerve endings, which is why reading braille and judging texture are both done there, and why a paper cut on one hurts so much. The whorls of the print are formed in the womb and are unique even between identical twins. The phrase at your fingertips means immediately available, and having something at your fingertips is a compliment about knowledge.

Sciencia58 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of fingertip

  1. 1nounfingertipThe end of a finger.B2

    “He ran a fingertip along the edge of the shelf.”

Phrases it lives in

  • at your fingertips — immediately available to you

Where it comes from

From finger + tip. Compare tiptoe and toetip.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

fingertip in the wild

  • In this approach, one side of a thin part of the patient's body, usually a fingertip or earlobe, is illuminated, and the photodetector is on the other side.

    Pulse oximetry

  • Hook nail is a bowing of the nail bed due to a lack of support from the short bony phalanx (fingertip).

    Hook nail

  • Gloving is a form of modern dance which involves the use of fingertip light-emitting diode (LED) lights to accentuate patterns.

    Gloving

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.