Idiom
fat finger
Meaning
A supposed cause of typographical errors, especially keyboard errors, caused from erroneous key presses or typing errors on touchscreen devices.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I made a fat finger error and sent the wrong message.”
“Be careful not to fat finger the wrong number on your phone.”
“I meant to type five dollars, but a fat finger mistake made it fifty instead.”
“I accidentally fat fingered the delete button while I was trying to save my progress on the report.”
“The customer service agent apologized for the fat finger typo that listed my address in the wrong city.”
“The trader blamed a fat finger for the accidental order that caused a brief fluctuation in the stock market.”
Examples
simple
“I made a fat finger error and sent the wrong message.”
“Be careful not to fat finger the wrong number on your phone.”
contextual
“I meant to type five dollars, but a fat finger mistake made it fifty instead.”
“I accidentally fat fingered the delete button while I was trying to save my progress on the report.”
“The customer service agent apologized for the fat finger typo that listed my address in the wrong city.”
complex
“The trader blamed a fat finger for the accidental order that caused a brief fluctuation in the stock market.”
Origin
The term arises from the mechanical difficulty of using a finger of excessive girth to strike a single key. The physical width of the digit causes it to overlap onto adjacent buttons, resulting in the accidental input of unintended characters. While the visual image suggests a specific anatomical cause, the expression has persisted as a general shorthand for any such clerical error committed during typing.
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated