Pl. occas. ladies’ fingers.
1. sing. and pl. The plant Anthyllis vulneraria, the Kidney Vetch.
Also applied dial. to various other plants, as Lotus corniculatus (formerly called lady-finger grass): see Britten and Holland, Plant-n.
1670. Ray, Catal. Plant. Angl., 24. Anthyllis leguminosa.… Kidney-vetch, Ladies finger.
1743. in W. Ellis, Mod. Husbandm. (1750), II. I. xv. 148. Your Lady-finger-grass (or Birds-foot Trefoil … which is the Botanical Name).
1756. Watson, in Phil. Trans., XLIX. 842. Kidney Vetch, or Ladies Finger.
1848. C. A. Johns, Week at Lizard, 306. Anthyllis vulneraria, variety Dillenii, Lady’s-fingers, occurs … all along the coast.
2. Applied to various objects of long and slender form. a. A kind of cake (cf. finger-biscuit). ? Obs.
1820. Keats, Cap & Bells, xlviii. Steep Some lady’s-fingers nice in Candy wine.
1828. Lights & Shades, II. 196. Honey and ladies’ fingers for tea.
b. Austral. A kind of grape. Also, a banana.
1892. E. Reeves, Homeward Bound, 90. The very finest ladies’-fingers, sweet-waters, and muscatels.
1893. Mrs. C. Praed, Outlaw & Lawmaker, II. 91. They were sitting … in the banana grove, whither Elsie had gone on pretext of finding some still ungathered ‘Lady’s fingers.’
c. U.S. (a) A variety of the potato; (b) One of the branchiæ of the lobster; (c) A variety of apple. (Cent. Dict.)
