bite one's finger tips
George Thompson
george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Tue Jun 1 03:58:52 UTC 2010
This is an expression meaning to lose at the Stock Market, or to make a losing bet, or something. It does not seem that the OED has anything like it, and I've never encountered it elsewhere.
The Stocks. -- The winds are not more variable than the price of Stocks as regulated by the Board of Brokers. *** So many long faces among the Brokers, we have not seen for some time, -- of course we infer that some of the initiated themselves, have bit the tips of their fingers by buying or selling on time.
Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, October 22, 1831, p. 2, col. 2
GAT
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
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