> Prior to the finger program, the only way to get this information was with a who program that showed IDs and terminal line numbers (the server's internal number of the communication line, over which the user's terminal is connected) for logged-in users. Earnest named his program after the idea that people would run their fingers down the who list to find what they were looking for.[1]
> The term "finger" has a definition of "to snitch" or "to identify"
I sometimes wonder about folks in the not-so-distant past of the 1980s and earlier, who seemed to be able to operate just fine with words that had both ordinary and indecent meanings, without feeling the need to call out (or else, defensively avoid) every case in which the former might be mistaken for the latter if someone were trying really hard make such a mistake.
All I can figure is a rise in lazy accidental-pun/double-entendre humor on various TV shows made us hyper-sensitive to it (think: Beavis and Butthead, for an early example). Call it the "that's what she said" effect.
I don't know. Finger was still pretty funny in the 90s. Even in the early to late 00's I remember having a good laugh over a professor telling us to practice fingering him. It's very antiquated English (I'd estimate pre-1970) to say you're "fingering" the bad guy, or "I was fingered by the police for the crime". In fact, I can only think of it's proper use in the context of matlock-type crime dramas and black-and-white noir films.
I don't think there's a thing to blame here. No hypersensitivity or anything. It's funny and it's been a sexual pun for decades (possibly even centuries). I wouldn't even go so far as to say it's a lazy pun. The joke even exists in stringed instrument circles. It's almost an universal constant for sexual innuendo in several fields.
It's actually a perfect case study for naming. You should always check for double entendres you didn't intend or secondary meanings. Another perfect case study is Experts Exchange which in the URL spelled "expert sex change". I don't think hypersensitivity made that apparent. I think we all have a national lampoon level of humor occasionally and these things are conduits of it.
If I'm reading your comment correctly, then fingering has the same connotation in the U.S. as well, it is also synonymous with third base. (Also have never heard the term either.)
Even at 18 years old when I first got a taste of Unix at university the `finger <username>` command made me snigger. But I was (and still am to some degree) very puerile.
Huh, I wonder if it varies regionally? Or maybe by generation? Millennial here, when I was using this system Second Base was fingering, handjobs, etc., and Third Base was oral.
I believe fingering is what Americans would call getting to third base.