3 extra days' paid time = 3 extra days of polling.

[lasultrix]

Poll Counting on from the thumb

http://eleveninches.livejournal.com/377436.html?thread=8292444#t8292444
Preliminary polling suggests that the Yanks were not laughing at me. A relief! Yes, marksykins, something like http://bit.ly/5fAre. Though Hillary

Comments

[lasultrix]

I was a bit surprised myself! I've never heard 'sling', only 'swing', so I had no idea what was likely to jump to people's minds if 'sling' was the dominant name for such a device.

To be fair, the context was being unable to wash my hair due to being in a sling, so the shoulder surgery aspect wasn't obvious.

[lasultrix]

By the way, the inspiration for this poll was a How to French-braid your hair video. I was very distracted by the use of "pointer finger".

[ellen_fremedon]

The object in the picture is indeed called a sling over here as well, but we'd say "my arm was in a sling." "I was in a sling" is kind of hard to parse, actually-- it does suggest that all of your body was in the sling somehow, and that mental image leads pretty directly to the sex-toy interpretation.

There's also the expression "to have one's ass in a sling," meaning to be in a difficult or awkward position. Does that phrase, or its equivalent, exist on your side of the pond?

[lasultrix]

No, but that's a pretty cool phrase!

I think I've been saying "I'm in a sling" rather than "My arm is in a sling" because it's something that strongly affects everything I do, rather than being a localised restriction. It feels whole-body - I wasn't even able to walk for long periods at first, because of the jostling. Ah well, it's coming to an end soon, and I've been very lucky to have this happen during a period of minimal stress in my life.

[ethrosdemon]

Sling is almost universally and exclusively used to describe an arm restraint. People are cracking you funny if they are pretending otherwise.

[lasultrix]

I weep.

What's the something else for the second finger?

[ethrosdemon]

I couldn't tell what you meant by second. You mean the first finger proper or the finger next to your thumb?

[lasultrix]

Finger next to thumb.

[edenfalling]

Honestly, I use index and pointer, and little and pinky fairly interchangeably. Variety is good! :-)

[lasultrix]

Dear Las,
Radio buttons exist for a reason.
Yours,
Lasair, your disyllabic and more sensible self (who is telling you to go asleep).

[snowqueenofhoth]

I use index OR pointer, little OR pinky finger. I'd say both are correct.

And a sling... is something you wear when you break your arm? That would definitely be me first thought, so this Yank is not laughing at you.