thumb

1
as in to hitch
to travel by securing free rides thought I'd thumb into town instead of paying for a cab

Synonyms & Similar Words

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2
as in to flip
to turn over pages in an idle or cursory manner I thumbed through the book during the flight but was too distracted to really read it

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of thumb Navratilova on Thursday posed a question to Democrats as some states have continued to thumb their nose at President Donald Trump’s executive order to keep males out of girls’ and women’s sports. Ryan Gaydos, FOXNews.com, 10 Apr. 2025 While nearly every country has announced retaliatory tariffs, nations, businesses and their citizens are increasingly willing to thumb their noses in ways that go beyond extra costs slapped on at ports, touching all levels of commerce. Jackie Snow, Quartz, 7 Apr. 2025 Some guards thumbed their noses at the FAA safety rules that flight attendants were supposed to enforce while airborne, multiple flight attendants recalled. Mckenzie Funk, ProPublica, 1 Apr. 2025 What’s worse is, some of the guilty ones thumb their noses at the state and refuse to pay fines, forcing the state to go to court. Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 26 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for thumb
Recent Examples of Synonyms for thumb
Verb
  • The impressive team effort enables nematodes to hitch rides on passing insects to more favorable habitats and bridge otherwise untraversable gaps, Ding and her co-authors suggest.
    Lauren Leffer, Popular Science, 5 June 2025
  • At the time, Cruise’s love story with Katie Holmes felt inextricably linked to the third Mission: Impossible film, which saw Ethan Hunt getting hitched to Julia, played by Michelle Monaghan.
    Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 23 May 2025
Verb
  • In fact, Bivens flipped for the FBI as a cooperating witness a few days before Pino killed himself, playing a critical role in solidifying the feds’ case.
    Jay Weaver, Miami Herald, 12 June 2025
  • The Baloncesto Superior Nacional league announced Tuesday that Cousins was kicked off the Mets de Guaynabo after a vile gesture toward a fan, grabbing his genitals to mock the fan as the fan flipped both his middle fingers.
    Scott Thompson, FOXNews.com, 11 June 2025
Verb
  • The graduate is not only bummed about the sister’s absence.
    Brian Anthony Hernandez, People.com, 25 May 2025
  • Everyone — from those actually paying to the ones still bumming a log-in — wants to know how Netflix and other streaming services’ crackdowns on password sharing affect them.
    Savannah Salazar, Vulture, 20 May 2025
Verb
  • This is because of the increasing demands for networking and switches to connect exponentially larger clusters, from spine to leaf in the front end and back end, rack to rack and accelerator to accelerator.
    Beth Kindig, Forbes, 19 Dec. 2024
  • Such a cacophony means that the reader keeps having to leaf back to make sense of the storyline.
    Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books, 30 Mar. 2023
Verb
  • In the cinematic video, Carpenter is hitchhiking across a desert landscape in everything from pickup trucks to station wagons to a grocery cart sidecar beside a motorcycle, all the while accompanied by himbos washing themselves with gasoline or trying to smoke a firecracker like a cigarette.
    Nicole Fell, HollywoodReporter, 6 June 2025
  • Before that, the Grammy winner also shared a teaser video of herself trying — and failing — to hitchhike.
    Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 3 June 2025
Verb
  • After reenacting the initial district court trial — in which Colvin, Browder, McDonald and Smith testified—the opera skims over the Supreme Court decision upholding the ruling.
    Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune, 7 June 2025
  • Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said crews deployed containment booms and began skimming the water almost immediately, working to isolate and extract the diesel fuel, which contains a red dye.
    Barney Henderson, MSNBC Newsweek, 5 June 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Thumb.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/thumb. Accessed 18 Jun. 2025.

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