Itchy thumb
An itchy thumb has a famous line behind it: "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," says a witch in Macbeth. Old English commentators traced it to the belief that any unexplained sensation foretold an event.
This page only describes folk beliefs. If the sensation keeps coming back or worries you, please see a doctor.
What it may mean
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," says the second witch in Macbeth, sensing the murderer before he knocks. Shakespeare's editor George Steevens, quoted by Brand, explained the line by a very ancient superstition: any sudden pain or sensation that could not be accounted for was a sign of something about to happen. The thumb makes an apt messenger, because it has long carried signals of its own. People raise it for yes and turn it down for no. In old Scotland, thumbs were licked to seal a sale, and in Shakespeare's London biting your thumb at someone was an insult. An itchy thumb can point you toward the agreements and refusals you signal every day, often without much thought.
Depending on how you saw it
Before a meeting or a deal
In old Scotland, two people licked their thumbs to show that a sale was agreed, a custom also reported from India. A thumb was a handshake before the handshake. Which recent yes did you give before you had really decided?
Tucked inside your fist
Hutchinson's history of Northumberland, quoted by Brand, says children there were taught to double the thumb inside the hand to keep danger away. Some people still tuck their thumbs in when nervous. What small gesture do you make when you want to feel safer?
On the thumb you text with
The thumb now does much of the typing on phones, swiping and tapping for hours a day. It may be the busiest finger you have. How many of the messages your thumbs sent today did you really mean?
Why it happens in nature
The thumb takes part in almost every grip, from holding a cup to typing on a phone, so its skin meets a lot of friction and is quick to register any tingle. Like any patch of skin, it itches now and then, and this page deals only with the folklore around that.
What folk beliefs say
England
On the witch's line in Macbeth, "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," Steevens observed, as Brand quotes, that it was a very ancient superstition that sudden pains and sensations of the body that could not be naturally explained were presages of something about to happen.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 179. View the page
To reflect on
Which recent yes or no did you signal before you had really made up your mind?