"stinkfinger"

[Chris F. Waigl]

On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 16:05 -0500, Wilson Gray wrote:

> >From the OED On Line:
>
> "*To play at *stinkfinger*,..to grope a woman."
>
> Is this really all that "to play at stinkfinger" means to white people?!
> Of course, it could be simply the case that "correcting" BE [stEiNkfEiN@]
> to "stinkfinger" in spelling does not mean that its meaning is necessarily
> the
> same as that of stinkfinger. Or, perhaps, the problem is due to my
> interpreting
> "to grope a woman" to mean merely "to cop a feel."

I'm not sure I understand[1] the various allusions to what the
expression means; I'll only be able to consult the OED tomorrow at the
earliest; and this might not have to do anything with the English
version at all. Still: colloquial German "Stinkefinger"[2] refers to the
well-known hand gesture (illustrated in Wikipedia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinkefinger ) Why the finger should stink
sheds light on the sense that some attribute to it (those who don't
believe in it's being merely a phallic symbol).

Chris Waigl

[1] or rather, I'm quite sure I don't understand
[2] German wants a linking-E

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