Is the thumb a finger of is it just another digit? This has been bugging me forever.
Damn, that’s a good question, Bob. I don’t know the answer, I just wanted to welcome you to the boards. For what it’s worth, I always thought of it as not a finger.
fin·ger (fnggr)
n.
One of the five digits of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
dig·it (djt)
n.
A human finger or toe.
Doesn’t help much does it?
Basically it’s a finger if you care to define it that way, and it’s not if you don’t wanna. They’re certainly homologous structures from a purely biological point of view. The big toe has the same basic relationship to the toes as the thumb has to the fingers and no one would consider it anything but a a toe, so my answer would be that the thumb is a finger just like the pinky is finger.