Other forms: thumbnails
A thumbnail is the tiny preview picture you click on. Small enough that a page can show dozens at once.
The word came from the nail on your thumb, by way of the idea of something no bigger than that. Computing borrowed it and made it the commoner sense by far. There is an older figurative use, since a thumbnail sketch is a very short description, and that phrase predates computers entirely. The literal anatomical sense is still perfectly current, and a thumbnail can be broken or bitten.
From thumb + nail. Compare West Frisian tommeneil (“thumbnail”), Dutch duimnagel (“thumbnail”), German Daumennagel (“thumbnail”). The phrase thumbnail sketch was first attested 1852. Verb sense attested 1930s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in News & Communication, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 34 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word