finger trouble
n.— «It was an assembly error in the car’s in-line six that led to a blow-up and fire as one of the conrods left the scene of the crime through the side of the engine block. Race teams put such failures down to “finger trouble,” since they are often due to mechanics doing something wrong with their hands.» —“Pointing the finger” Sunday Times (Perth, Australia) Jan. 21, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
Ian in Jacksonville, Florida, wonders about why musicians use the word clam to mean “a mistake” or “an egregious musical error,” as in There are a lot of clams in there or We need to practice where the clams are regarding a...