Thumb θʌm I Noun Bre Sucks She's Worried

• she still sucks her thumb when she's worried.
• there's a hole in the thumb.
• he made a thumbs-up sign through the window to tell us everything was fine.
• he smiled and raised a thumb in greeting.

thumb

1. the short thick finger at the side of the hand, slightly apart from the other four
• see also green thumb
  https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/green-thumb
• She still sucks her thumb when she's worried.
2. the part of a glove that covers the thumb
• There's a hole in the thumb.
3. to be awkward with your hands so that you drop things or are unable to do something
4. to hope that your plans will be successful or that something will take place in the way that you want it to
• Let's hold thumbs that you get the job.
5. a practical method of doing or measuring something, usually based on past experience rather than on exact measurement
• As a rule of thumb, you should cook a chicken for 20 minutes for each pound of weight.
6. to be very noticeable in an unpleasant way
• The blue building stood out like a sore thumb among the whitewashed villas.
• If you wear a suit to the party, you’ll stand out like a sore thumb.
7. used to show that something has been accepted/rejected or that it is/is not a success
• Their proposals were given the thumbs down.
• It looks like it's thumbs up for their latest album.
8. to move your thumbs around each other with your fingers joined together
9. to do nothing while you are waiting for something to happen
10. completely controlled by somebody
• She’s got him under her thumb.

Extra Examples

• He made a thumbs-up sign through the window to tell us everything was fine.
• He smiled and raised a thumb in greeting.
• I picked up the beetle carefully between finger and thumb.
• I sat there twiddling my thumbs until the manager finally appeared.
• I stuck out a thumb and a car stopped immediately.

Word Origin

• Old English thūma, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch duim and German Daumen, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin tumere ‘to swell’. The verb dates from the late 16th cent., first in the sense ‘play (a musical instrument) with the thumbs’.