STICKING FINGERS INTO THE LANGUAGE

Have you heard about 'finger fluting' a neologism seemingly coined by American anthropologists at Cambridge University and released to the waiting world via segments on Radio 4 this morning?

Finger fluting is not, as one might expect - or hope - a new method of teaching the recorder; nor is it a decorative style arising from dragging the fingers through soft material such as clay.

In fact finger fluting is prehistoric painting: swirls, lines and zig zags smeared by stone age children onto the cave walls (inevitably in the Dordogne) where their parents were depicting antelope, an occasional mammoth and the inevitable crowds of bison.

I am glad children of those far-off times were allowed such artistic licence. Certainly my two have never had a great deal of parental support for their efforts in recolouring the wallpaper. Clearly times have changed in the past 10 or 12 millennia.

Leaving the visual arts aside, I am much more concerned with the words that have come to describe this speliological endeavour. Why 'fluting'?

I've just been through the full Oxford English Dictionary (yes we do own one in the office) to find nothing that would bring us close to the concept. Indeed fluting implies a more complex series of manual processes that simple markings in paint.

I suspect alliteration is to blame. Something that goes with fingers ('nails' not starting with an 'f').

But with that in mind, should anthropologists not have come up with 'digital daubs'?