butter-fingers

   A term used almost exclusively as a vocative, and associated especially with cricket, though it can be applied to anyone who lets a ball or other object slip through his fingers. In The Pickwick Papers we learn of Mr Jingle that at every bad attempt at a catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations as - ‘Ah, ah!’ - ‘stupid!’ - ‘Now, butter-fingers’ - ‘Muff’ - ‘Humbug’ - and so forth, which seemed to establish him in the opinion of all around, as a most excellent and undeniable judge of the whole art and mystery of the noble game of cricket.

   Thackeray, in his Miscellanies, has a rather more gruesome example of the word’s use: ‘When the executioner had come to the last of the heads, he lifted it up but, by some clumsiness, allowed it to drop; at this the crowd yelled out, “Ah, Butter-fingers!”’