Word.ws English Dictionary

fat-finger

Syllables: fat-fin·gerUK/ˈfæt ˈfɪŋɡə//ˈfæt ˈfɪŋɡɚ/

fat-finger verb: to type (something) erroneously on a keyboard, keypad, or touchscreen by accidentally pressing with a finger one or more keys other than the intended one. Also the alternative form of fat finger.

Verb

fat-finger (third-person singular simple present fat-fingers, present participle fat-fingering, simple past and past participle fat-fingered)

  1. (humorous, informal, transitive) To type (something) erroneously on a keyboard, keypad, or touchscreen by accidentally pressing with a finger one or more keys other than the intended one.
    • Another Sprint employee speculated that someone might have fatfingered the keyboard.1995 September 8, “US West software update disconnects online users”, in Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn.
    • However the other day I fatfingered a web request and got a Charter Communications not found result page2008 August 24, “DNS: Patched but not totally fixed”, in TechRepublic

Also used as

fat-finger is also the alternative form of fat finger.

Examples of fat-finger in a sentence

  • “Evidently, someone said they ‘fat-fingered’ a trade, meaning they accidentally put it in for billions instead of millions,” Snyder said.2010 May 6, Jennie Runevitch, “Source of Stocks’ Plunge Investigated”, in WTHR, Indianapolis, Ind.:
  • In general, mobile form designs are "chunkier," using larger input boxes to make it easier to tap in the intended field, even if the user "fat-fingers" it.2015, Jon J. Raasch, Graham Murray, Vadim Ogievetsky, Joseph Lowery, “Acquiring Data Interactively”, in JavaScript and jQuery for Data...

Forms of fat-finger

Verb
third-person singular presentfat-fingers
present participlefat-fingering
past participlefat-fingered
pastfat-fingered
alternative formfatfinger
alternative formfat finger
Noun
pluralfat-fingers

Origin of fat-finger

See fat finger.

Questions about fat-finger

What does fat-finger mean?
Fat-finger means to type (something) erroneously on a keyboard, keypad, or touchscreen by accidentally pressing with a finger one or more keys other than the intended one.
How do you use fat-finger in a sentence?
“Evidently, someone said they ‘fat-fingered’ a trade, meaning they accidentally put it in for billions instead of millions,” Snyder said.
What part of speech is fat-finger?
Fat-finger is a verb.
How do you pronounce fat-finger?
Fat-finger is pronounced /ˈfæt ˈfɪŋɡə/ (UK).
What is the past tense of fat-finger?
The past tense of fat-finger is fat-fingered.

Words near fat-finger in the dictionary

  1. fat-asses
  2. fat-buttocked
  3. fat-cat
  4. fat-cats
  5. fat-chewing
  6. fat-finger
  7. fat-fingered
  8. fat-fingering
  9. fat-fingers
  10. fat-free
  11. fat-gutted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fat-finger (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-fat-finger.wav.

Cite this entry: “fat-finger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fat-finger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.