Dianthus plumarius, common garden pinks, in the Jibou Botanical Garden Romania. Pink flowers with green stems.
30 November 2021
The smallest finger, and often the smallest toe, is commonly referred to as a pinkie. But the reason for this is not readily apparent. There isn’t a logical connection between the color pink and the smallest digit, but it turns out there is an indirect etymological connection.
Before the name of the color appeared, the word pink could mean a small hole or slit, or to make such a hole. The verb to pink, meaning to cut eyelet holes or slits in a fabric, dates to the late fifteenth century (the modern pinking shears, although they serve a different function, are so named because of this older sense). By the early sixteenth century, the noun pink could mean an eyelet or small hole, and by the middle of the century, pink could mean to wink or blink one’s eyes.
These earlier senses may be echoic, like ping, referring to the sound of cutting or punching holes, or they may be borrowed from the Dutch pincken, to become small, narrow. And the Flemish pink-ooghen means to blink. But the English use is attested earlier than the Dutch, so it’s possible the transmission could have gone the other way. In either case, we don’t know for sure where the word comes from. This use of pink, meaning small, was especially common in Scots, where it can probably still be found in some quarters.
The adjective pink, meaning the color, is a relatively late addition to English, appearing in the mid seventeenth century. The color takes its name from the flowers of the genus Dianthus, and in particular from Dianthus plumarius, commonly known as the pink. The name of the flower appears in English by the mid sixteenth century. From William Painter’s 1566 The Palace of Pleasure:
May it not be broughte to passe, that I may smell, that swete breath which respireth through thy delicate mouthe, béeing none other thing, than Baulme, Muske, and Aumbre, yea and that which is more precious, which for the raritie and valor hath no name euen as I doe smell the Roses. Pincks and Uiolets hanging ouer my head, franckly offering themselues into my handes?
How the pink got its name is not known for certain, but it may be related to an older use of pink to mean small or narrow (see below). In French, a number of flowers, notably the carnation, are dubbed oeillet, literally eyelet, a reference to the center of the bloom which can resemble an eye. It may be that the English pink was influenced by this analogous word in French. Originally dubbed pink because of its small “eye,” the word came to refer to the flower’s color.
And the color pink is so named a few decades later. There is this description of a “gentleman” in John Marston’s 1607 play What You Will:
He eates well and right slouenly, and when the dice fauor him goes in good cloathes, and scowers his pinke collour silk stockings: whe[n] he hath any mony he beares his crownes, whe[n] he hath none I carry his purse, he cheates well, sweares better, but swaggers in a wantons Chamber admirably.
And the noun designating the color can be found in James Howard’s play The English Monsieur, performed as early as 30 July 1663, but not published until 1674:
I came from the Exchange, where I saw a flock of English Ladies buying taudry trim'd Gloves, of the dull English fancy; Pink, Scarlet and Yellow together one chose; another Black, Red and Blew, and Pendants like Hawks Bells, and these Ladies were making themselves fine for a Ball in the City.
That’s how the color got its name, but what about the little fingers and toes?
The adjective pink-eyed, meaning small-eyed, appears in English by 1516 in William Horman’s Vulgaria uiri doctissimi (The Wisest Common Men):
Some haue myghty yies / and some be pynkyied.
Quidam pregandibus [sic] sunt luminibus / quidam peti.
And the verb, in the form of the participle pinking, meaning to narrow or close, appears in John Heywood’s 1544 The Playe Called the Foure PP, where refers to a drunkard’s eyes growing heavy and closing:
Syr after drynkynge whyle the shot is tynkynge
Some hedes be swymmyng but myne wyl be synkynge
And vpon drynkynge myne eyse wyll be pynkynge
For wynkynge to drynkynge is alway lynkynge.
The 1621 Flyting Betwixt Montgomery and Polwart uses pink to refer to a small person. A flyting is a poetic and ritualistic exchange of insults:
On sik as thy sell, little pratling pink
Could thou not wair ink, thy tratling to tell,(As much as you sell, you little, chattering pink
Could you not expend ink to tell your chatter?)
Finally, we get to pinkie meaning the smallest digit. This first appears in John Jameson’s 1808 Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. Here is a series of entries for pink-words in that dictionary. Being over two centuries old, the etymologies are not necessarily to be trusted, but the entries do show the variety of uses that pink was put to in the Scottish dialect:
To PINK, v. n. To contract the eye in looking at an object, to glimmer, S[cottish].
Teut. pinck-ooghen, oculos contrahere, et aliquo modo claudere [to contract the eye, and in some manner close it]. E[nglish]. pink is used in a different sense; as properly signifying to wink, to shut the eyes entirely, or in a greater degree than is suggested by pink as used in S. Hence,
PINKIE, adj. A term applied to small eyes, or to one who is accustomed to contract his eyes, S.
Meg Wallet wi’ her pinky een
Gar Lawrie’s heart-strings dirle.
Ramsay’s Poems, i. 262.
To PINK, v. n. To trickle, to drop; applied to tears, S.B. [Scotia Borealis, north of Scotland]
And a’ the time the tears ran down her cheek,
and pinked o’er her chin upon her keek.
Ross’s Helenore, p. 29.
This is perhaps merely a metaph. sense of the v. explained above; a tear being said to steal over a woman’s cheek to the lower part of her cap, in allusion to the stolen glance which the eye often takes when it seems to be nearly shut.
PINKIE, s. The little finger; a term mostly used by children, or in talking to them, Loth[ian]. Belg[ic]. pink, id. pinck, digitus minimus [smallest finger], Kilian.
PINKIE, s. The weakest kind of beer brewed for the table, S. perhaps from pink, as expressing the general idea of smallness.
PINKIE, s. The smallest candle that is made, S. O.Teut. pincke, id. cubicularis lucerna simplex [simple bedroom lamp]; also, a glow-worm.
While it was originally Scots and Scottish English, pinkie, referring to the smallest digit, is now quite widespread. It was brought to North America by either Dutch or Scottish immigrants, or perhaps both. The Dictionary of American Regional English does not indicate that it is especially common in any particular region of the United States but is found throughout.
So that’s it. Pink originally meant small or narrow, possibly echoic or borrowed from Dutch. And from there it expanded in meaning to refer to the color, the flower, and the smallest fingers and toes.
Sources:
Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), 2013, s.v. pinkie, n.2.
The Flyting Betwixt Montgomery and Polwart. Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1621, sig. A3. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Heywood, John. The Playe Called the Foure PP: A Newe and a Very Mery Enterlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary, a Pedlar. London: 1544, unnumbered 6r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Horman, William. Vulgaria uiri doctissimi. London: Richard Pynson, 1516, 30v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Howard, James. The English Monsieur. London: H. Bruges for J. Magnus, 1974, 2.1, 11. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2006, modified September 2021, s.v. pink, n.4, pink, n.5 and adj.2; modified June 2021, s.v. pink, v.1; pink, v.2; modified December 2020, s.v. pink-eyed, adj.1, pink, n.6, pinkie, adj. and n.1.
Painter, William. “The 44th Nouell: Alerane and Adelasia.” The Palace of Pleasure, vol. 1 of 2. London: Henry Denham for Richard Tottell and William Jones, 1566, fol. 210r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Jameson, John. Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, vol. 2 of 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1808. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Marston, John. What You Will. London: G. Eld. for Thomas Thorpe, 1607, 3.1, sig. E4v.
Scottish National Dictionary, 2005, s.v. pinkie, n., pink, pink(e, n.1, pink, n.3. Dictionaries of the Scots Language / Dictionars o the Scots Leid.
Image credit: Dianthus plumarius, Krzysztof Ziarnek, 2018, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.