Community Chat

[Sooner]

When you use your hand to indicate "three" do you use:

A: Your index finer, middle finger, and fourth finger;

or

B: Little finger, fourth finger, middle finger?

I never saw anyone do B until I live where I live now, and I see that pretty often. SO, I thought I'd take a fun poll and see what YOU do! 

[SahmIam]

A

I've never seen B and I've traveled all over the world and lived on the East and West Coast, New England, the South and out West. 

This fascinates me!  I'm now going to keep my eye out for it and try to start a conversation where it's necessary, lol, to see what people do. Maybe I'll just ask them to do it!!

Editing to add: Choice B is what I've seen people do when saying "OK!"

[sidsmom]

A

But I've seen "B" in Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' video.

https://youtu.be/OAwaNWGLM0c

[Suziepeach]

That would be "A".

[deepwaterdotter]

A.

[noodleann]

---

@Sooner wrote:

When you use your hand to indicate "three" do you use:

A: Your index finer, middle finger, and fourth finger;

or

B: Little finger, fourth finger, middle finger?

I never saw anyone do B until I live where I live now, and I see that pretty often. SO, I thought I'd take a fun poll and see what YOU do! 

---

This is reminding me of a scene in "Inglourious Basterds." One of the characters was impersonating a German and what revealed him as an imposter was the finger-counting you ask about. Germans apparently begin with the thumb, a cultural quirk a native would know and all but the best-trained spy would not. 

Since I've always indicated "1" with my index finger and counted from there, that's what I do. The idea of counting from the smallest, least prominent finger seems odd to me, but that's the nature of such things. 

[Bri36]

I do A.

My daughter does B.  I've never seen anyone do it that way, but her. 

[chrystaltree]

I don't recall ever raising fingers to represent 3...  

[cerb]

A

[KingstonsMom]

I do A ........unless I'm behind a driver doing 35 mph in the passing lane on the interstate, in which case I choose to use the middle finger only!

I've never seen option B used before.