- 1
You call someone butterfingers, usually with a laugh, when they keep dropping what they are holding or trying to catch — a ball, a plate, their keys. The picture is that their fingers are coated in butter, so things slide off. It is informal spoken English, a bit old-fashioned and playful: parents say it, children's books say it, and someone who misses a catch in a game may hear it. You can call a person this (You butterfingers!) or say he is a butterfingers. It comes from the older adjective butterfingered. Tone matters: with a smile it is warm teasing; said sharply it can sting. It is not a food word, and it is not the chocolate bar some packets still show.
手殘、常漏接的人(東西拿不穩;多半是開玩笑的叫法)
組成From butter + fingers — clumsy dropping, as if the hands were slippery with butter — and from the older word butterfingered.
同家族的字
- butterfingeredthe older adjective; butterfingers is the person
- fingersthe body part in the joke
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,原文照列,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
butterfingersnoun/ˈbʌtəˌfɪŋɡəz/
- 1
informalSomeone who tends to drop things; (more generally) someone who is clumsy or uncoordinated; a klutz.
- I am such a butterfingers. That’s the third drink I’ve spilled today.
- [A]t every bad attempt at a catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations as—"Ah, ah!—stupid"—"Now butter-fingers"—"Muff"—"Humbug"—and so forth—ejaculations which seemed to establish him in the opinion of all around, as a most excellent and undeniable judge of the whole art and mystery of the noble game of cricket.
- 2
informalOne's fingers which tend to drop things, or are clumsy or uncoordinated.
- “I guess everyone’s got butterfingers around here,” Cole said with a sly smile. “Lucky for us, I’ve got fast reflexes.”
- “That boy’s got butterfingers,” Connor went on. “That’s twice he’s dropped a tool. He’s got no place on a construction site.”
- 3
informalA tendency to drop things, or to be clumsy or uncoordinated.
資料來源:英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary(CC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。