Superstition #15 Cutting Fingernails at Night

Title: Cutting Fingernails at Night

General Information about Item: 

  • Genre and Sub Genre
    • Verbal Folklore: Superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: India

Informant Data:

  • Informant is currently a sophomore at Dartmouth College from West Windsor, New Jersey. He identifies as South Indian. He was raised practicing Hinduism but considers himself agnostic. He studies math and enjoys playing trumpet in his free time.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: The informant learned this primarily from his family. He also observed that this superstition was widely held in India when he traveled there as a child.
  • Cultural Context: This superstition stems from a common theme of Indian superstitions, the connection between cleanliness and nighttime. The informant noted that there is likely a religious component to this superstition, but he did not know exactly what it was.

Item:

  • Bad Luck Superstition: Cutting one’s fingernails at night brings bad luck and sickness.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Informant’s Comments:

  • He noted that there might be a practical purpose for this superstition. Before electricity, cutting nails at night meant cutting nails in darkness. It would have been hard to see properly, making it more difficult to clean up and more likely that one could cut oneself.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This superstition follows a definite theme in Indian superstitions as well as Asian superstitions as a whole. It was also one of the first mentioned by everyone interviewed, which means it might be one of the more prominent.

Collector’s Name: Mitchell Tang

Tags/Keywords:

  • Indian/Bad Luck/Superstition/Fingernail/Night

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