She had nothing to say to the pleasant subalterns of the Guards' Brigade nor they to her. From Anthony Pryde, Marqueray's Duel (1920):
ENGLISH WORD POWER AT YOUR FINGERTIPS FULL
This result has not come from a dependence upon unsupported general and abstract statements but from notes which are full enough to be quoted, and from frequent discussion of the leading cases.īut soon enough "the X of the world at fingertips" gives way to "the world at fingertips. The author has well carried out his purpose of making the book as useful to the village lawyer who is denied access to a good law library, as to the urban counsel with the libraries of the world at his fingertips. Quite noticeable also is the large amount of space devoted to the foot-notes. Humphrey Ward, in her latest novel, introduces as her leading female character a woman who with all the good things of this world at her fingertips leaves her husband and runs away with a poet.Īnd from a review of John Dillon's Commentaries on the Law of Municipal Corporations in The Yale Law Journal (November 1911): One of the most popular fiction writers of the day, Mrs. There are few spots you can't reach through the magic of short-wave radio īut the phrase actually goes back several decades before that, with the sense "having everything one might want within reach." Initially, the phrase was a component of longer phrases of the form "the X of the world at fingertips." For example, from " The Trend of Modern Fiction," in The Advance (April 13, 1905):
Why isn't the world is at your fingertips listed in any of the online dictionaries I consulted? (NB: I don't have access to the OED.) If the novel term selfie made it, why not this one?Īlthough "having the world at your fingertips" can mean having the world at your command, it can also mean having ready access to the world-in many instances, specifically, through technology or through other sources of information.Ī Google Books search finds an example of the phrase used in this sense in the title of an article about short-wave radio that appears in Boys' Life magazine (October 1953):.However, the line chart seems to display a convergence between the two in recent years. In addition, Google Ngram shows that "at your fingertips" (blue line) took hold sometime in the 1950s, a great deal later than the variant "at your feet" (red line). It reminds me of similar idioms, such as the sky's the limit and Shakespeare's line, the world's mine oyster. She could do or be anything she wanted to be because of her youth, and the "fingertips" represented the act of grasping one's dreams and goals. I'm sure the presenter's aim was to emphasize the boundless opportunities open to the young woman. So then I tried looking up to have the world at your fingertips, but surprisingly I didn't find any online dictionaries that listed this figure of speech. To be extremely successful and admired by a great number of people
Now, when a person has the world at their feet, it suggests that they have achieved success, accolade and fame. It's only going to help you become a better person.Īnd as soon as I heard that, I thought: "Weird, isn't it to have the world at your feet? you are young, you have the world at your fingertips. If I had the chance today to spend six weeks somewhere, to better myself and work on whatever addiction it is that I have, whether it's work, whether it's bulimia, anorexia, I would take it at a heartbeat.
ENGLISH WORD POWER AT YOUR FINGERTIPS TV
I was watching a YouTube video about eating disorders when the American TV presenter ended a pep talk with the following words:
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