All those other uses never occurred to me. I just always assumed it was the drug thing. Learn a new thing every day.
How does one harden a fingernail? I’m asking because I play guitar, and even though I don’t let my nails grow very long, they often break.
Plus, it might come in handy if I ever have to do hard time. 
Isn’t there something called Sally Hanson Hard As Nails?
Classical guitar nails are very precisely shaped and should not extend past the meat of the finger, at least not by much.
Some men have a long fingernail for nothing other than fashion, albeit a fairly ugly fashion.
I’ve got a Vietnamese co-worker–he’s about 60 and was an officer during the war–who has a long pinky nail. Is there some cultural backstory there? I can’t get a straight answer out of the guy. And he doesn’t strike me as a cokehead, but really we don’t hang out a lot outside of work.
I keep my index finger nail a bit long cause i use it for so many things like picking nose, picking up dimes, stuff like that.
i thought that guitarists were supposed to use their fingers rather than their nails. isn’t it anathema for classical guitarists to even think about using nails?
Well, if he’s anything like me, it means that every single one of his nails broke except for that one. And it does always seem to be either the pinky or the thumb that manages to withstand breakage. It just breaks my heart to clip off that brave struggling fingernail to match its brethren and throw all its hard work out the window.
My math professor has one long pinky nail. He is from Nigeria. It seems unlikley that he does cocaine and he certainly is well groomed.
I had a couple of teachers who had one long nail.
The story that was passed around school (I cannot vouch for it’s veracity, but it’s possible) is that it’s a sign that the person does not do manual labour.
I play classical guitar (very, very badly), and I always pick with my fingers, not the nails. You have more control over the sound with the fingertips than nails; you can brush a string softly, or really snap it, and so on. I can’t imagine doing that with fingernails.
Disclaimer: this information comes only from my experience over about four years of playing; I didn’t take lessons and have no idea if the pros use their fingernails, but I can’t imagine that they would.
Come to think of it, I think there are a few places on Christopher Parkening’s In the Spanish Style album where he does use fingernails and gets a very different, distinctive, crackly sound from it. Not at all like the “normal” classical guitar sound.
I once hung out with a Flamenco guitarist, a freakin’ virtuoso IMHO, who kept all five on his right, (plucking) hand shaped into very precise guitar-pick shaped, They seemed thicker and harder than his other nails, probably from use.
Martin
I used to work with a guy who keeps both his pinky nails long. He’s a software engineer and he does it so he can reach the Control and Enter keys easier.
Krokodil: “Is there some cultural backstory there?”
There are probably various subcultural meanings. Samuel R Delany’s “Nova” mentions one character doing this while working as a street trader in Istanbul (“He had grown one little fingernail three quarters of an inch long, as did the other boys who worked the dirty streets behind the Monasteraiki flea market, selling rugs, brass gewgaws … etc”).
A friend of mine is an artist. When he makes a mistake, he uses his fingernail to scrape off the paint. He says he started growing his pinky nail long because it was quicker and more convenient than reaching for a knife or razor blade.
He also fancies himself a rebel, and he likes doing things that make the rubes paranoid.
A cousin of mine fixes wrist watches, he uses his long ‘little’ finger nail, as a screw driver or something. He said it did’nt mean nothing.
I used to work with a guy who did the same thing. I just asked him and he said it was to do coc.
Along with the other reasons mentioned, it used to be common for sailors to grow one nail long to use as an impromptu tool.
I forget what book, but one of the characters supposedly hardened his thumb nail by holding it in a candle flame. I haven’t any idea if it would work, but it’s a possible method.
The cashier at subway Tuesday had one nail grown long. I asked him why he had it like that, and he remarked that he had a running competition with one of his friends as to who had the longest fingernail.