Word.ws English Dictionary

ball of the thumb

ball of the thumb noun: the fleshy portion, opposite the nail, of the first segment (first phalange) of the human thumb.

Noun

ball of the thumb (plural balls of the thumb)

  1. (informal) The fleshy portion, opposite the nail, of the first segment (first phalange) of the human thumb.
  2. The most fleshy portion of the palm of the human hand, located adjacent to the second joint of the thumb: the thenar eminence.

Forms of ball of the thumb

pluralballs of the thumb

Questions about ball of the thumb

What does ball of the thumb mean?
Ball of the thumb means the fleshy portion, opposite the nail, of the first segment (first phalange) of the human thumb.
What part of speech is ball of the thumb?
Ball of the thumb is a noun.
What is the plural of ball of the thumb?
The plural of ball of the thumb is balls of the thumb.

Words near ball of the thumb in the dictionary

  1. ball mustards
  2. ball of chalk
  3. ball of fire
  4. ball of fluff
  5. ball of malt
  6. ball of the thumb
  7. ball off
  8. ball out
  9. ball outs
  10. ball park
  11. ball park estimate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ball of the thumb (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ball of the thumb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ball_of_the_thumb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.