Re: fingers

As I've said, growing up in the United States, I never heard the word
"pinkie."  It was always called the "little finger." Then when I was in
college in the mid-1970s, some men started to wear a ring on their
little finger. These were called "pinkie rings." Soon afterwards, I
began to hear people calling the little finger itself a "pinkie." It's
probably been around a lot longer than that, but that's the way I
remember it.

--Ph. D.

Chris Bates wrote:
>
> We have it in the UK too, but I'd consider it baby talk rather than
> something I'd use to refer to one of my own fingers. And it sounds like
> a diminutive of pink in English too... I know that we don't really have
> a regular diminutive ending, but sometimes you can use -y, especially if
> affection is being expressed.
>
> > Is "pinky" American English? In that case it's likely to be derived from
> > Substandard colloquial Dutch "pinkie", Standard Dutch "pinkje", dim.
> > of "pink".
> >
> > This "pink", would it mean something like "the fifth (finger)", from
> > IndoEuropean
> > *penkwe , *pinkwe or so = five ?
> >
> > Ingmar

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