Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <word-usage><word-meaning>
Title: Can I say "fingers" when referring to toes?
Question: In my native language, there is no word for  toes . You just use the same word for both toes and fingers. In this context, I would say a human has 20 fingers.   Recently I've heard someone saying a human has 10 fingers (without saying it out loud but assuming that the other 10 are toes and not fingers).  Can I use  fingers  when referring to  toes ? Would saying that a human has 20 fingers make sense, in English?

Answers:
sents: text: Nope.
text: Fingers are only on the hand, except for figurative uses such as ladyfingers (a dessert).
text: If you talk about the fingers on someone's foot, or a person with 20 fingers, unfortunately you'll just generate unsettling mental images.
text: :)
text: As smci points out, to refer to the ensemble, people will often say "fingers and toes".
text: This is a so-called " Siamese twin " phrase: the two words love to be paired and the order can't be reversed.
text: We do also have a single word that covers both fingers and toes: digits .
text: It registers as a somewhat technical term, likely something your doctor would write in a report about an injury.
text: I think most people would understand it in other contexts anyway, though some speakers might not realize that it can apply to toes, probably because of the influence of "finger".
text: (Also, someone's "digits" is a way of referring to their phone number.)
text: A third alternative is "appendages", which everyone will understand, but which is usually too broad (see comments below) and simply sounds funny when used of regular human body parts.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/50807/Luke Sawczak
score: 95
sents: text: Toes are not fingers.
text: The general term for fingers and toes is digits .
text: We have twenty digits: ten fingers and ten toes.
text: In French, the toes are called 'doigts de pied' ('fingers of the foot'), also 'orteils'.
text: Doigt nom
text: masculin Chacune des parties libres et mobiles qui terminent la main de l'homme :
text: Compter sur ses doigts.
text: Toe Digit Doigt (Larousse)
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/46805/Michael Harvey
score: 30
sents: text: No, the correct term to use in your case would be digits .
text: This means both fingers and toes.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/89698/Mike Brockington
score: 16
sents: text: Heh.
text: There is one particular case where you could do it, but it's pretty bizarre.
text: If a person loses his thumb, this will have major effects on the function of the hand as a whole.
text: Thumbs are important .
text: In such cases, the preferred treatment is to transplant the big toe of the appropriate foot to substitute for the missing thumb.
text: Big toes are not nearly as important to proper functioning of a foot.
text: With time, the pad of the transplanted toe will shrink, and with use and therapy the toe joint will become more flexible.
text: The result is not a perfect replacement, but it's much better than the alternative.
text: In this case, you could talk about having 10 fingers when one of them is (or at least started out as) a toe.
text: You could even have two, if you're unfortunate.
text: Other than that, the other answers are spot on:
text: English makes a clear distinction between fingers and toes.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/21298/WhatRoughBeast
score: 4
sents: text: Can I use fingers when referring to toes?
text: Would saying that a human has 20 fingers make sense, in English?
text: No.
text: I don't believe there is any context in which this would be correct - not even some of the unusual ones suggested by other people.
text: I agree that 20 digits is correct.
text: We could say, "The typical human has ten fingers and toes."
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/21249/chasly - reinstate Monica
score: 2
sents: text: You could refer to toes as fingers as a metaphor if you were describing someone with uncommon dexterity in their toes.
text: The crowd was amazed when the escape artist kicked off his shoes andhis newly exposed fingers untied the knot.
text: If you mean the toes themselves, then describing them as fingers would be wrong, and confusing.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/54464/cmm
score: 1
sents: text: I have only used the word 'fingers' to refer to 'toes' when looking at some pre-Renaissance and Renaissance paintings where barefoot figures looked like they had fingers for toes.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/1313/Xenson
score: 1
sents: text: No "fingers and toes" is what we would say in everyday speech or writing (not "digits", which is more technical/precise).
text: (Yes, to be pedantic, "finger" is here referring to both fingers and thumbs
text: ) "digits" is the more technical/precise term, but you'd almost never hear that spoken, except when discussing anatomy.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/5551/smci
score: 1
sents: text: Humans have 10 fingers and 10 toes.
text: It would not be correct to say that we have 20 fingers or 20 toes.
text: Fingers are only on our hands, and toes are only on our feet.
text: However, a general word "digits" can be used to say that we have 20 digits altogether.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/44527/magnetar
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
 Fingers are only on the hand, except for figurative uses such as ladyfingers (a dessert). However, we do also have a single word that covers both fingers and toes:  digits.  English makes a clear distinction between fingers and toes.
Fingers and toes are not the same thing but digits is a word that can be used t encompass both.