See finger to the wind on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "fingers to the wind",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "fingers to the wind"
},
"expansion": "finger to the wind (plural fingers to the wind)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "A crafty man-of-the-world keeps his finger to the wind.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1986 January 26, ROBERT REINHOLD, “ADOBE'S SEER: B. J. PEVEHOUSE; DIGGING IN AS OIL PRICES SLIDE”, in NY Times:",
"text": "At the height of the great oil boom, in the frenzied summer of 1981 when everybody said oil prices could go nowhere but up, the crafty old Texas wildcatter put his finger to the wind and decided it was not going to last much longer.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011, David Leheny, “Four Cultures of Japanese Politics”, in Victoria Bestor, Theodore C. Bestor, Akiko Yamagata, editors, Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society:",
"text": "The DPJ, in this view, had pursued a similar path: riding to power on the back of telegenic politicians and with a finger-to-the-wind fidelity to public opinion polls, the party had allowed, in effect, the mass media to dictate outcomes",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015 February 20, Stephanie Merry, “When it comes to Oscar predictions, whom can you trust?”, in Washington Post:",
"text": "How they choose: They hold up a finger to the winds of recent awards results",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2017 May 25, “The Tory manifesto doesn't add up – and school breakfasts prove it”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "This is a reform that the ancien regime, always with a finger to the wind of public opinion, spotted as an electoral nightmare and ducked.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Attention to/Focus on or awareness of current/prevailing trends, as of opinion or power."
],
"id": "en-finger_to_the_wind-en-noun-i1Ok-efY",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Attention to/Focus on or awareness of current/prevailing trends, as of opinion or power."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "which way the wind is blowing"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "finger to the winds"
},
{
"word": "finger in the wind"
},
{
"word": "finger in the air"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"word": "finger to the wind"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "fingers to the wind",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "fingers to the wind"
},
"expansion": "finger to the wind (plural fingers to the wind)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "which way the wind is blowing"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with quotations",
"English terms with usage examples",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "A crafty man-of-the-world keeps his finger to the wind.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1986 January 26, ROBERT REINHOLD, “ADOBE'S SEER: B. J. PEVEHOUSE; DIGGING IN AS OIL PRICES SLIDE”, in NY Times:",
"text": "At the height of the great oil boom, in the frenzied summer of 1981 when everybody said oil prices could go nowhere but up, the crafty old Texas wildcatter put his finger to the wind and decided it was not going to last much longer.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011, David Leheny, “Four Cultures of Japanese Politics”, in Victoria Bestor, Theodore C. Bestor, Akiko Yamagata, editors, Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society:",
"text": "The DPJ, in this view, had pursued a similar path: riding to power on the back of telegenic politicians and with a finger-to-the-wind fidelity to public opinion polls, the party had allowed, in effect, the mass media to dictate outcomes",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015 February 20, Stephanie Merry, “When it comes to Oscar predictions, whom can you trust?”, in Washington Post:",
"text": "How they choose: They hold up a finger to the winds of recent awards results",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2017 May 25, “The Tory manifesto doesn't add up – and school breakfasts prove it”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "This is a reform that the ancien regime, always with a finger to the wind of public opinion, spotted as an electoral nightmare and ducked.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Attention to/Focus on or awareness of current/prevailing trends, as of opinion or power."
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Attention to/Focus on or awareness of current/prevailing trends, as of opinion or power."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "finger to the winds"
},
{
"word": "finger in the wind"
},
{
"word": "finger in the air"
}
],
"word": "finger to the wind"
}
Download raw JSONL data for finger to the wind meaning in All languages combined (2.4kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (0c0c1f1 and 4230888). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.