hangnail
8
4.9
- noun
- /ˈhæŋˌneɪl/
- Idly, I flicked my pocket knife open and started trimming a hangnail.
- get a hangnail
- picked at a hangnail
- bite your hangnails
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Watch on YouTubeAnd so the pain of doing The thing is the hangnail and the future pain of regret for decades is the punch to the arm.
- And so the pain of doing The thing is the hangnail and the future pain of regret for decades is the punch to the arm.
Examples
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But here on the sidewalk at the trattoria, she bites a hangnail and looks again at my foot.
Fiction book (1998) -
Gramoo once had a hangnail on her big toe.
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Yeah, you ever get like a hangnail?
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- I think I'm getting a hangnail.
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Cunningham looked down at his hands and picked at a hangnail.
Fiction book (2002) -
My fingers were filled with hangnails, more painful than paper cuts.
Fiction book (2002) -
So, sitting there in the rocker, I commenced, real serious-like, to study a hangnail on my little finger.
Fiction book (1997) -
That didn't last too long because my cuticles and hangnails get out of hand and I'm just flat out bad at doing my own nails.
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Ruys chews a hangnail.
Fiction book (2002) -
I have a painful hangnail at the edge of my thumb that keeps snagging on my clothes.
Synonyms
A small torn piece of skin at the edge of a fingernail that can hurt and get infected
How Painful
Surface Forms
Etymology
Hangnail comes from the old English word angnægl, made of parts meaning 'pain' and 'nail', so it originally meant a 'painful nail'. A helpful way to remember the modern meaning is to imagine a small piece of skin 'hanging' from the edge of your nail that can hurt.