What Does A Long Pinky Nail Mean

Dear Cecil:

For decades I've wondered, and assuming the answer would be highly personal, take failed to ask: what'south the deal with the extra-long little finger fingernail on people from the Orient (Heart East, India, Southeast Asia)?

Jim Mundy, Pawhuska, Oklahoma

Cecil replies:

You're thinking I'1000 going to say I did all my enquiry for this on the Internet. Well, not all. I have a buddy with a long pinkie nail and a high embarrassment threshold, so I called up and asked. Still, permit's face up it: for topics resistant to conventional lines of inquiry, the Cyberspace is hard to beat. Some theories, many lifted from the Straight Dope Message Lath, this column's own lilliputian window into the demimonde:

Organic coke spoon. As if nosotros needed to ask.
Booger scoop and earwax excavator. Gross, yes, but sure keeps that coke from falling off.
In the former days in China, long fingernails were a sign you lot were rich and didn't exercise manual labor. Now they grow out the pinkie as a sign of culture, breeding and wealth. No doubt there's some truth to this. A bit of browsing turns upwards photos of ornate fingernail protectors worn by ladies of the imperial Chinese courtroom. Bizarre though such talons may seem to some, one could argue that as an indicator of culture, convenance, and wealth they vanquish having to purchase a Jaguar and read Proust.
My Chinese students (all about 18 to 22) told me the nails are long so the pinkie reaches past the last knuckle joint on the band finger. If information technology does, you are rich and intelligent! Perchance, but if I'thousand Anna Nicole Smith trying to size up a prospective soul mate, I'm going to need to see more than than a little finger nail.
My 76-twelvemonth-quondam uncle keeps ane pinkie nail long and sharpened to open envelopes.
A sharpened, hardened nail is a unsafe weapon and tin be a sign of prison fourth dimension. Or of a man who opens a lot of envelopes.
I thought it was a sign 1 was a pimp.
My friend has i and always hints information technology is for sexual purposes. I actually hope they don't involve earwax.
Great for opening compress-wrap. Ha! I bet that'southward what Mr. Sexual Purposes does with information technology.
General scratching and ear cleaning. The longer nail too works well when trying to pick up something lying apartment on a table, like a money. Definitely seeing a common thread here. My assistant Bibliophage points to the French give-and-take auriculaire, pregnant little finger finger, of which Larousse remarks, "ainsi nommé parce que sa petitesse lui permet de south'introduire dans l'oreille" ("then named considering its small size allows information technology to be introduced into the ear").
My pinkie finger on both my hands is a bit longer than the other nails. I use them for playing the tarifs, or sympathetic strings of the sitar, in different fashions. I use the correct one for playing a quick scale down the sympathetic strings between different movements of the Hindustani classical music I commonly play. The left 1 I use for hitting the tarifs equally accents during the slow, first motion, or alap. I keep my right alphabetize nail a niggling long so that I can pluck each cord individually (they are hard to reach) for tuning. And equally a bonus, people recall you're a pimp.
The cashier at Subway had 1 smash grown long. I asked him why and he said he had a running contest with ane of his friends as to who had the longest fingernail. This, on so many levels, is why I never eat at Subway.
A Google search produced some interesting ones: that Picasso kept a long lilliputian fingernail for mixing paints, and that Turkish men commonly keep such a smash for opening cigarette wrappers.
I am the only man I know that has 32 different colors of nail varnish, as I accept one two-inch-long little finger nail that I paint up like the Colombian flag. Whatever you say, partner. Yet, I have to indicate out that the Colombian flag only has three colors.
Don't cutting my nails, pinkies simply ones that don't suspension off. My friend'southward answer. Give him credit for honesty.
On a Beijing subway I saw a guy with a long pinkie blast clean his nose and his ears with it. Correct later he wiped his nail on the hand track, someone grabbed information technology. Wonderful place, Beijing subways. OK, I recall we got it. Theory, at least in some parts of Asia: sign of civilisation, convenance, and wealth. Practice, regardless of locale: booger scoop.