Date:  Tue, 7 Oct 1997 16:54:52 -0500
From:  "Donald M. Lance" <engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU>
Subject: Re: pop one's fingers

>At 02:19 PM 10/3/97 -0400, you (Robert Ness <ness[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DICKINSON.EDU>) wrote:
>>Some West Africans, Ghanaians especially, "pop their fingers," as it's
>>called, by flipping or snapping the wrist so that the index finger "pops"
>>sharply against the thumb and middle-finger. The gesture expresses
>>surprise or amazement. I've not seen it done here, or even so referred to,
>>but like West African tooth-sucking (expressive of contempt) it may have
>>made it across the Atlantic into the south or the Caribbean.
>
>The gesture you describe (where one puts the tips of the thumb and
>middle-finger together and then snaps the first finger against them by
>sharply moving the wrist downwards) is universally used in Brasil to express
>surprise or excitement, positive or negative. Brasilians are unfamiliar with
>the way people from the US snap fingers (as described by Joan Houston Hall
>in the very first post in this thread), and I have never seen it done the
>Brasilian way in the US though that doesn't mean it hasn't been.
>
>Anyway, I didn't mention in my prior post on the "finger pop" phrase that
>the context of the song I cited seems to suggest that the gesture expresses
>contempt or disdain (i.e., the popper/snapper doesn't care about the person
>or situation s/he is popping or snapping at).
>
>See also OED thrip v. (with citations back to the 16C) and "finger-snap"
>(under finger n.) for the idea of snapping one's fingers in contempt or to
>express worthlessness etc. An electronic search of OED2 for various ways
>that "to *pop* the/one's fingers" might have showed up there yielded nothing.
>
>Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

........................

Mexican American children in South Texas schools pop their fingers (as
described by Robert Ness) when holding up their hands in attempting to get
the teacher's attention when a question is asked of the whole class. It is
done with much enthusiasm, accompanied by "Miss" or "Mister." In my memory
it was universal in the 1940s, and I saw the same gesture in 1988 when I
visited a sixth-grade class on the Mexican border.