tried googling it but I only got the idiom and not an actual answer
You must log in or register to comment.
3 hoursMaybe try looking up paw more generally. Merriam Webster seems to think it can be used to describe any animal foot, or human hands (albeit with some baggage), or as a verb for rough contact.
For further uses outside of explicitly furry animal feet, a few more come to mind: southpaw, (left handed baseball player), catspaw (knot/hammer/chuck), and chicken paw (chicken foot, usually in the context of food).
In terms of the specific expression you’re asking about, it’s from a work of fiction. If evocative language serves your story better, even if it doesn’t fit as well by literal meaning, that’s reason enough to use it. In this story paw may have better communicated crudeness than hand would’ve. Or maybe the author thought paw better drew out the parallels with a lucky rabbit’s foot. Ultimately, why it was chosen doesn’t really matter, the imagery was powerful enough that we’re still talking about the story.
Humans have hands. Humans arent monkeys (according to idiots). Monkeys are animals, but less than human. Lesser beings have paws. According to idiots.
that’s how W. W. Jacobs decided to call it
- [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish1 day
This is the technically correct answer as monkeys do have hands. The story is from 1902 and maybe terminology has changed or the author thought it was the right term. Doesn’t matter once it was published.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand
A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs.
- 16 hours
You have a paw, or palm, of your hand, as well as your feet. Seriously, kids…
You activated the magic by rubbing the palm/paw, not the knuckles. Not the fingers. This just seems so silly to me.
On that note, Tyler Durden and the Narrator were the same person. And Bruce Willis was a ghost. And when Jeff Dunham (sp? don’t like his comedy) is up there with the puppet, he is actually THE ONE SPEAKING, never the puppet.
The more you know. (shooting star)
- 14 hours
“Paw” does not mean “palm”. It effectively means “animal forefoot” for furry animals with soft-bottomed round-ish feet.
- 14 hours
Etymology. This is silly. Are you not an animal?
Me either. I am a rather fungi.
So silly: do you refer to the palms of your feet? Do you refer to the back paws of a dog? Just dumb.
And you used effectively ineffectively.
Like, what effect are you affecting? You realize the difference between nouns and verbs, right? Because we are discussing nouns.
Just, I don’t know, etymology.
Oh, you sky-intists. You won the smart award for this.
And did you read it? You rub the palm.
(slow clap using my paws…)
Ok, so you know how you have features on your palm that stand out? Like the base of your fingers, the base of your thumb, and the opposing side: That IS your paw.
- 13 hours
Are you from another world? You don’t know where your paws are? Jesus on a cracker, you are so damn ignorant.
Do I need to explain that you also have thighs? Not just chickens have them.
Seriously, what the hell do you use for grip? Your paws. This is insane.
Google grip with your paws. OMG, you are going to get your goddamn mind blown.
I know you haven’t worked construction, but you probably should wear a hard hat just in case.
Really cannot fathom why in the world I am having to explain something so fundamental.
- 13 hours
You are one of the following:
- A furry
- A troll
- Confidently incorrect
I’m leaning 2, can you help me out?
- 13 hours
Yes… what?
Paws are part of the palm. You grip with them.
I swear, I want to shake the hands of all of the dorks so they can feel their fucking paws.
- 13 hours
You have to be just trolling. My entire cat’s foot isn’t a paw. Each foot or hand has multiple paws.
I think I am just talking to little kids.
- 13 hours
Your cat’s entire foot is a paw
The word you seem to be getting confused is “pad”
Paw pad. The pad of the paw.
- 1 day
Most arbitrary decisions like this can be blamed on Victorians.
If you’re cute and fuzzy, it’s a paw.
If you’re big, tailless, and (mostly) hairless (read:ape), it’s a hand. Wikipedia refers to upper gorilla extremities as arms and hands:
A 2018 study investigating the hand posture of 77 mountain gorillas[…]
I have no actual idea but that’s my general guess.
- 18 hours
Though I wouldn’t claim it to be an objective truth, my wife has previously declared me both cute and fuzzy.
Though I may have (consensually) pawed at her on occasion, she’s never claimed that I have paws.
- 13 hours
No. You have paws on your hands. Look at your hand. Grip it with your paws: common expression.
See the dip in the middle of your palm? See how there are little mountains around it? THOSE ARE YOUR PAWS.
- 10 hours
I could believe that it might be a local or even vocation-specific phrase (see “southpaw” in boxing, for example), but the doubling down instead of questioning whether their take might be hyperspecific or plain wrong is hilarious.
- 9 hours
My charitable explaination is that he worked in the trades for a long time and is confusing an extremely local phrase (“grip with your paw”) with actual definition of the word.
One construction team I worked with a lot when I did trades called 2x4s “tooths” (two four -> twofer -> tooths) along with a bunch of other jargon. My team (AV/IT) called small screwdrivers “tweaks.” When you work with the same people long enough, you come up with your own jokes and phrases…
In Finnish they are monkey’s hands. Because they are hands. Also, I had always assumed that’s how it goes in every language. So, in English they are paws?!
What about other languages? Hands or paws or what?
- 14 hours
Yeah, “paw” typically is understood to mean the forefoot of furry animals without hooves or similar. I think most people would say “hand” for a monkey, but language isn’t always precise, and the phrase “monkey’s paw” (as a magical item) is at least a hundred years old too.
- 12 hours
yeah now that you say it calling them “tassar” in swedish sounds absolutely insane, it’s like calling their hands “elbows”
Then it might be about some very unusual kind of monkey. Not a very clingy one.
- 11 hours
In German you CAN use “Pfote” (which is the translation for paw) for hands though. Not a nice word though.
Animals have paws, humans – hands. Like humans have faces while animals – muzzles. But my English is quite basic, so I’m not sure if I correct.
- 11 hours
You are indeed not correct, paws are distinctly different from hands and the muzzle is a specific part of an animal’s face.
Paws are different from hands in that they’re made up ONLY of fingers, the equivalent to our wrist is way above the paw as part of the leg.
And the muzzle (also called snout) is the jaws+nose, the bit on e.g. a dog that sticks out in front of the face. It doesn’t include things like the eyes.
- 14 hours
Nah, paws are specific types of appendages. Monkeys have hands. But it’s possible that back when the idiom was coined, it was different bc of that kind of logic.
- 13 hours
You have paws on your fucking hand and feet! Goddamn, look at your hand. You see where the center of your palm is deep, but you have raised flesh at the base of your thumb and under your pinky finger, as well as the base of your fingers?
Dude, those are your fucking paws.
Fuck’s sake.
They aren’t appendages, they are attributes of the appendage. Has the world just gone crazy?
Grip it with your paws, don’t just use your fingers: if you ever worked with your hands you would have heard that phrase.
- terranoid@lemmy.cafeEnglish1 day
Yes but linguistically separate, due to history considering humans special and separate from animals.
And you’re a pedant who pretends to not understand what I am talking about.
- 1 day
They are! and they haven’t been particularly consistent with language, if you have the opportunity do write down all of these inconsistencies as you learn English - they are a wonderful source of humor
My theory: Its that way because humans tend(ed) to describe themselves as special “players” for a long time till this day and beyond. Probably the concept of religion, philosophy and some sciences are also in part responsible for this. When referring to nature, life or species in daily conversations it seems to be rather common for humans to mention humans isolated from the fauna (and flora (and fungus)).
- 11 hours
it’s impossible to test until we find another sapient species (and not something like highly evolved crows in the future, because they would be affected by us), but i think it’s likely that any sapient creature would group “sapients” and “non-sapients” separately.
Like we intuitively group other human species as “not animals” with that line getting blurrier the further back you go and they’re less obviously sapient, and at least personally i find it a little bit difficult to call parrots animals when they can literally learn to vocally describe a random object they’ve never seen before.
