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Fingersʹ Ends

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I have it at my fingersʹ ends. I am quite familiar with it and can do it readily. It is a Latin proverb (Scīre tanquam unʹgues digʹĭtosq.), where the allusion is to the statuary, who knows every item of his subject by the touch. (See Unguem.)

“Costard: Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingersʹ ends, as they say.

Holofernes: O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.”—Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 1.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.