Showing results for "fingering"

• present participle of finger.

fingering

American  

[fing-ger-ing] / ˈfɪŋ gər ɪŋ /

noun

fingerings plural

1. the act of a person who fingers.

2. Music.

   1. the action or method of using the fingers in playing on an instrument.

   2. the indication of the way the fingers are to be used in performing a piece of music.

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fingering ¹ British  

/ ˈfɪŋɡərɪŋ /

noun

1. the technique or art of using one's fingers in playing a musical instrument, esp the piano

2. the numerals in a musical part indicating this

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fingering ² British  

/ ˈfɪŋɡərɪŋ /

noun

1. fine wool for knitting

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• fingerings
  plural

Etymology

Origin of fingering

Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at finger, -ing ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

fingering fingerings

Chopin sought to convey these moods through explicit performing directions about fingering, pedaling and slurring.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 29, 2026

"I tend now to play parts of chords, rather than fingering the whole damn thing. I use these shortcuts that would be a nightmare for a guitar teacher."

From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2023

For more than a decade, scientists have debated which animals alive today hail from that earliest sister, fingering two phyla as the most likely candidates: sponges and comb jellies.

From Science Magazine ● May 17, 2023

She had a leopard scarf elegantly wrapped around her head and was fingering a glittering ring and staring blankly into the distance.

From Reuters ● Feb. 7, 2023

I played with Miig’s pouch around my neck to keep me grounded, pulling on the mud-stained shoelace, fingering the contents through the hide.

From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline

Charlie’s first instrument was a banjo, but, baffled by the fingerings required to play it, he removed the neck and converted its body into a snare drum.

From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2021

Featured in a band lead by Earl “Fatha” Hines, Parker dazzled his Harlem contemporaries with his lightning-fast fingerings and innovative chords, the building blocks of the jazz style that came to be known as “bebop.”

From Washington Post ● Aug. 28, 2020

“My scores of Schumann, Chopin, Ravel, and Messiaen are still covered in the meticulous fingerings and often pointed criticisms that she would notate, bar after bar,” he wrote shortly after Loriod’s death, in 2010.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018

Students learn and practice on a chanter, an oboe-like instrument with the same fingerings as the bagpipe’s melody pipe.

From Washington Times ● Jan. 31, 2017

Sometimes this makes things easier on instrumentalists; they may not have to learn different fingerings when they switch from one kind of saxophone to another, for example.

From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones