a pricking in (one's) thumbs

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a pricking in (one's) thumbs

old-fashioned An intuition or premonition about something; a sense of foreknowledge about a situation, condition, or set of circumstances. A reference to a line in Shakespeare's Macbeth: "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes." I have this pricking in my thumbs that the meeting isn't going to end in our favor. She felt the old, familiar pricking in her thumbs, a sense that something awful was about to happen to someone close to her. Mom doesn't think we should go on our trip—she says she has a pricking in her thumbs that our plane is going to crash.

a pricking in your thumbs

a premonition or foreboding.

This expression comes from a speech by the Second Witch in Shakespeare's Macbeth: ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes’.