Talk:Knuckle

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Anatomy: Gross Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anatomy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anatomy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnatomyWikipedia:WikiProject AnatomyTemplate:WikiProject AnatomyAnatomy Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. This article has been classified as relating to gross anatomy.

Is it normal to have hair growing on my knuckles? Why sigh, cutie pie? 00:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes. Mr.Weirdo 23:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

No ^Talk User:Fissionfox 14:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary. The article has content that is useful at Wiktionary. Therefore the article can be found at either here or here (logs 1 logs 2.) Note: This means that the article has been copied to the Wiktionary Transwiki namespace for evaluation and formatting. It does not mean that the article is in the Wiktionary main namespace, or that it has been removed from Wikipedia's. Furthermore, the Wiktionarians might delete the article from Wiktionary if they do not find it to be appropriate for the Wiktionary. Removing this tag will usually trigger CopyToWiktionaryBot to re-transwiki the entry. This article should have been removed from Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there.

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 05:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I support this idea. The fact that the knuckles article doesn't redirect to this article is a bit odd, so I suggest we make it redirect here, and make the Echidna character part of the new disambiguation page, along with cracking knuckles. Gurko 13:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I went ahead and did so. Gurko 12:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Should a weasel words infobox be put onto the page? ^Talk User:Fissionfox 14:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

What the heck is the game "knuckles." Paul, in Saudi 14:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC) The game 'knuckles' is also known as 'knucklebones' and 'jacks'. it is described (there is an article) in wiki. - srw 11 aug 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.150.47.230 (talk) 03:57, 11 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

The article repeats the old wives' tale:

	"The popping or cracking sound heard when cracking joints such as knuckles is caused by synovial fluid filling the vacuum left by the joint's displacement." 

and cites, as evidence, a Johns Hopkins article (which itself provides no evidence). I must point out that this seems to be based on speculation and hearsay. (Hearsay is not evidence, even when a medical doctor repeats it.)

My objections are:

1. The old urban legend about bubbles in the synovial fluid never seems to be accompanied by photographic evidence. A little thought suggests there *aren't* any pictures, and never will be, because the bubble theory alleges a process which takes place in milliseconds and on microscopic scales. The difficulty of inserting an endoscopic camera into a live joint and then flooding it with enough light to permit high-speed photography suggests that this experiment has not been done and never will be.
2. The pop sound might be better accounted for by the fact that the opposite surfaces of the joint stick together (which furthermore explains the perceived loss of mobility), and the suddenness of the separation explains the suddenness of the sound.
3. It is of course true that a sudden drop in pressure in a liquid can trigger the release of bubbles of dissolved gases. Familiar examples include the froth of bubbles released whenever one opens a bottle of soda or champagne, or the nitrogen bubbles which a diver experiences during the bends. Note however that these bubbles form soundlessly, without a "pop".

Better citation needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.28.222.57 (talk) 17:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

You make many good points! A better theory (tribonucleation at bubble inception) – with evidence! – is at: Kawchuk GN, Fryer J, Jaremko JL, Zeng H, Rowe L, Thompson R (2015) Real-Time Visualization of Joint Cavitation. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0119470. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119470 yoyo (talk) 06:37, 20 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

Before the edit, the article suggested that the English word "knuckle" is a direct borrowing from German "Knöchlein", when instead it is merely a parallel formation from a common Germanic root meaning "bone." From dictionary.com:

"Origin: 1325–75; Middle English knokel (akin to Dutch kneukel, German Knöchel), diminutive of a word represented by Dutch knok, German Knochen bone; see -le."

The diminuitive suffix "-le(n)" is no longer productive in English, though it is as "-li, -le" in various southern dialects of modern High German (Swabian, Bavarian, Allemanic [Swiss]), and "-lein" in standard High German.--Janko (talk) 19:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

The image at the bottom of the article of a "Clenched fist with knuckles (encircled in red)" does not have the distal interphalangeal joints circled 174.240.213.251 (talk) 14:54, 7 August 2022 (UTC)Reply