Tweezers

Tweezers are small hand tools used for grasping objects too small to be handled easily with the fingers, working as a pair of thumb driven, third class levers joined at a fixed point. The tool is ancient: drawings from predynastic Egypt show craftsmen using double bow shaped tweezers, and brazed metal tweezers were common in Mesopotamia and ancient India from around 3000 BCE onward, used for practical purposes such as removing lice as well as craft work. The English word comes from etwee, a small case for carrying items such as toothpicks, itself from the French etui and the Old French verb estuier, meaning to hold or keep safe, and the tool came to be called tweezers because it was commonly kept in one of these cases. Today tweezers are used for hair removal, for handling small electronic components, in stamp collecting, in cooking to remove bones from fish fillets and plate food, and in jewelry making and other close craft work where fingers alone cannot hold a small piece steady.