Word.ws English Dictionary

fingerspelling

fingerspelling noun: the practice of representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands to spell out words. Also the present participle and gerund of fingerspell.

Noun

fingerspelling (countable and uncountable, plural fingerspellings)

  1. The practice of representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands to spell out words.
  2. Any system for representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands; a manual alphabet that is a representation of a written alphabet.
  3. A representation of the spelling of a word using such a system.

Also used as

fingerspelling is also the present participle and gerund of fingerspell.

Synonyms of fingerspelling

Forms of fingerspelling

pluralfingerspellings
alternative formFS

Origin of fingerspelling

From finger + spelling.

Questions about fingerspelling

What does fingerspelling mean?
Fingerspelling means the practice of representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands to spell out words.
What part of speech is fingerspelling?
Fingerspelling is a noun.
What is the plural of fingerspelling?
The plural of fingerspelling is fingerspellings.

Words near fingerspelling in the dictionary

  1. fingersome
  2. fingerspell
  3. fingerspelled
  4. fingerspeller
  5. fingerspellers
  6. fingerspelling
  7. fingerspellings
  8. fingerspells
  9. fingerspelt
  10. fingerspin
  11. fingerstall

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fingerspelling (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:

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