My phalanges are right here, helping me type out these words.
In answering this question, I third-guessed myself. Second-guessing is bad enough a phenomenon, but I suspect it takes some deep and serious insecurities to go further—especially when you discover you were right the first time! Second-guessing myself took me to everyone’s favorite search engine and misinterpreting skeletal diagrams because I didn’t allow my imagination to remind me where the fleshy center of my hand would be. Third-guessing meant writing out an entire answer that detailed my journey from my original answer to the “correct” answer, then re-studying those same diagrams because something didn’t seem right and feeling more than a little bit ridiculous when my imagination at last turned on.
Yes, as it turns out, what I’d learned during my course on physical anthropology was correct: phalanges is the scientific word for fingers.
With care,
~ Grigori