fingerspelling
noun, verb
fingerspelling is a noun meaning “The practice of representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands to spell out words” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-I-N-G-E-R-S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G, and it appears about once in every 56 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fingerspelling is fingerspellings.
What does fingerspelling mean?
noun
- 1
The practice of representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands to spell out words.
- 2
Any system for representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands; a manual alphabet that is a representation of a written alphabet.
- 3
A representation of the spelling of a word using such a system.
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of fingerspell
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of fingerspelling
- fingerspellings plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fingerspelling?
Fingerspelling appears about once in every 56 million words in written English, the 234,209th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you abbreviate fingerspelling?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of fingerspelling: FS.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Fingerspelling in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Portuguese | dactilologia, datilologia , alfabeto manual |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does fingerspelling come from?
From finger + spelling.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).