fat-finger

English

Etymology

See fat finger.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfæt ˈfɪŋɡə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfæt ˈfɪŋɡɚ/
• Hyphenation: fat-fin‧ger

Verb

fat-finger (third-person singular simple present fat-fingers, present participle fat-fingering, simple past and past participle fat-fingered)

1. (transitive, humorous, informal) To type (something) erroneously on a keyboard, keypad, or touchscreen by accidentally pressing with a finger one or more keys other than the intended one.
   • 1995 September 8, “US West software update disconnects online users”, in Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn.:

     Another Sprint employee speculated that someone might have fatfingered the keyboard.

   • 2008 August 24, “DNS: Patched but not totally fixed”, in TechRepublic:

     However the other day I fatfingered a web request and got a Charter Communications not found result page

   • 2010 May 6, Jennie Runevitch, “Source of Stocks’ Plunge Investigated”, in WTHR, Indianapolis, Ind.:

     “Evidently, someone said they ‘fat-fingered’ a trade, meaning they accidentally put it in for billions instead of millions,” Snyder said.

   • 2015, Jon J. Raasch, Graham Murray, Vadim Ogievetsky, Joseph Lowery, “Acquiring Data Interactively”, in JavaScript and jQuery for Data Analysis and Visualization, Indianapolis, Ind.: Wrox Press, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, part II (Working with JavaScript for Analysis), page 77:

     In general, mobile form designs are "chunkier," using larger input boxes to make it easier to tap in the intended field, even if the user "fat-fingers" it. So make sure to add some extra padding to all your input fields, and also increase the font size a bit so it's not only more legible but also larger on the touchscreen.

   • 2015, Brad Williams, David Damstra, Hal Stern, “Securing WordPress”, in Professional WordPress: Design and Development, 3rd edition, Indianapolis, Ind.: Wrox Press, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 371:

     Slowing down the number of login attempts before an IP address is blocked reduces the attractiveness of your site to an automatic attack script. Note that generally these offer temporary IP address blocking, so that valid users who accidentally fat finger their password have an opportunity to log in after the ban has expired.

Alternative forms

• fatfinger
• fat finger

Translations

See also

• typo

Noun

fat-finger (plural fat-fingers)

1. Alternative form of fat finger

Further reading

• “fat-finger, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.