18 Comments

1. July 26th, 2013 / 3:24 am Matthew Simmons—

   I go:

   “When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods.”

   and then I just type some other stuff and hope no one notices.

2. July 26th, 2013 / 10:05 am bartleby_taco—

   I just write the word “hands” and hope the reader can understand where I’m going. (ex. “She used her hands for things,” “George Costanza’s hands,” “You had to ‘hand’ it to him,” etc…).

3. July 26th, 2013 / 10:55 am mimi—

   tears of laughter and rivulets of laugh-snot streaming into my morning coffee right now Mr. Milligan

4. July 26th, 2013 / 12:50 pm A D Jameson—

   Hands are to writers what feet are to Rob Liefeld.

5. July 26th, 2013 / 2:40 pm Daniel Bailey—

   “finger heads”
   “utile mouths”
   “pussy feet”

6. July 26th, 2013 / 3:48 pm reynard—

   “permanent flowers”
   “stars that don’t know they’re stars”
   “lesser claws”

7. July 26th, 2013 / 5:41 pm deadgod—

   bony sensor-manipulators

   But that’s etymologically circular.

   I’m with bartleby taco: ‘hands’ generally is unbeatable for “hands”. In a particular context, where some flowery specification is called for, that context would generate the parameters for the embedded descriptor.

8. July 26th, 2013 / 6:16 pm deadgod—

   Here’s “hands” in an evolving context: from

   After lunch I was reclining in a low chair trying to read. Suddenly two deft little hands were over my eyes: she had crept up from behind as if re-acting, in a ballet sequence, my morning maneuver. Her fingers were a luminous crimson as they tried to blot out the sun, and she uttered hiccups of laughter and jerked this way and that as I stretched my arms sideways and backwards without otherwise changing my reclining position.

   to:

   I considered it wiser not to criticize the thing in front of Lo: she was so healthily engrossed in “problems of expression,” and so charmingly did she put her narrow Florentine hands together and batting her eyelashes and pleading with me not to come to rehearsals[.]

   to:

   Somewhere beyond Bill’s shack an afterwork radio had begun singing of folly and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands, and her gooseflesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, [. . .]–and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.

9. July 26th, 2013 / 7:50 pm mimi—

   this ain’t bad neither:

   They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her hand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about here and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage.

10. July 27th, 2013 / 12:01 am Jeremy Hopkins—

    paperholders
    asswipers
    leverpullers
    soapbarstranglers

11. July 27th, 2013 / 1:46 am A D Jameson—

    “The appendages at end of human arm, being the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb, as well as the corresponding part of the forelimb in any of the higher vertebrates, as well as something resembling a hand in shape or function, as various types of pointers: the hands of a clock.”

12. July 27th, 2013 / 12:01 pm mimi—

    greater paws

13. July 27th, 2013 / 12:02 pm mimi—

    chickenchoker

14. July 27th, 2013 / 11:53 pm Jeremy Hopkins—

    It’s ‘chickenchokers’ plural, thank you very much. Multiples of these things, or more than one.

15. July 28th, 2013 / 10:18 am mimi—

    edited it

    you’re welcome

16. July 28th, 2013 / 10:17 pm Jeremy Hopkins—

    Should I be offended?

17. July 29th, 2013 / 9:49 am mimi—

    i try to steer away from telling others what they should or shouldn’t be
    i certainly hope you are not offended – i had no intention of causing offense

    you wanted ‘chickenchoker’ to be plural, i changed ‘chickenchoker’ to the plural, i was happy to change ‘chickenchoker’ to the plural

18. July 29th, 2013 / 9:50 pm Jeremy Hopkins—

    Now it’s ‘chickenchokers’ plural.
    Thank you very much.