thumbscrew
- n instrument of torture that crushes the thumb
- n screw designed to be turned with the thumb and fingers
- This thumbscrew theory is opposed by the fact that Finland's present Government, including President Svinhufvud himself, has been notably anti-Prohibitionist from the start.
- To Nabokov, the ultimate displaced person, the contemporary world increasingly came to appear more barbarous than the thumbscrew age of Cervantes.
- Rome is still Rome, however, ready to enforce the new dogmas with some of the same thumbscrew pressure that it once used to enforce the old.