Word.ws English Dictionary

five-finger exercise

five-finger exercise noun: a musical composition for the piano, designed to require the use of all the fingers of the hand for the purpose of skill development.

Noun

five-finger exercise (plural five-finger exercises)

  1. A musical composition for the piano, designed to require the use of all the fingers of the hand for the purpose of skill development.
    • It was the singular room which Carlyle had constructed in the hopes that he could shut out all the noises of the universe, the crowing of cocks, and the jingling of a young lady's five-finger exercise in particular.1899, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 20, in A Duet
  2. (broadly, figuratively) An activity which is undertaken for the purpose of skill development.
    • Batman Begins, the 2005 film that launched Nolan's series, was a mere five-finger exercise. This is the full symphony.2008 July 9, Richard Corliss, “Batman Is Back—TIME Reviews The Dark Knight”, in Time

Forms of five-finger exercise

pluralfive-finger exercises

Questions about five-finger exercise

What does five-finger exercise mean?
Five-finger exercise means a musical composition for the piano, designed to require the use of all the fingers of the hand for the purpose of skill development.
What part of speech is five-finger exercise?
Five-finger exercise is a noun.
What is the plural of five-finger exercise?
The plural of five-finger exercise is five-finger exercises.

Words near five-finger exercise in the dictionary

  1. five-eighth
  2. five-eighths
  3. five-finger
  4. five-finger discount
  5. five-finger discounts
  6. five-finger exercise
  7. five-finger exercises
  8. five-fold
  9. five-foot way
  10. five-for
  11. five-fors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: five-finger exercise (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-five-finger exercise.oga.

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