Clumsy or prone to dropping things; lacking skill in handling objects carefully.
From 'butter fingers'—fingers so slippery as to be as smooth as butter, making it hard to grip things. Became standard idiom by the 1800s.
This phrase perfectly captures how people understood physical clumsiness through food—greasy, buttery fingers would naturally struggle to hold anything! The term was used for cricket fielders who dropped catches.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.