Why are the hands of a clock called hands? To me, this makes little sense; they do not resemble hands in any way, and if anything body-part related, they should be arms. So why are they called hands?
Learn English – Why are the “hands” of a clock called “hands”
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Related Solutions
Etymonline says:
ladybug
1690s, from lady + bug. The "lady" is the Virgin Mary (cf. Ger. cognate Marienkäfer). In Britain, now usually ladybird beetle (1704), through aversion to the word bug, which there has overtones of sodomy.
As to Lady Bird Johnson, that nickname was given to her by her nurse, as Wikipedia explains:
Though she was named for her mother's brother Claud, during her infancy, her nurse, Alice Tittle, commented, she was as "purty as a ladybird" [...]. That nickname virtually replaced her actual first name for the rest of her life. Her father and siblings called her Lady, though her husband called her Bird, which is the name she used on her marriage license. During her teenage years, her schoolmates had called her Bird, though mockingly, since she reportedly was not fond of the name.
Responding to your comment, I will add that both of her parents were natives of Alabama and the nurse was an African American. The Corpus of Historical American Language has these stats for ladybird vs. ladybug:
(X axis: year, Y axis: incidences per million words.)
In A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English by Terence Patrick Dolan there is the entry: arm. Here we can read: "He came home with one arm as long as the other (i.e., without any kind of present ...)".
Also, on urbandictionary.com we can read:
One arm as long as the other
Basically turning up somewhere with nothing to give when something is expected. i.e coming to a party empty handed. Irish in origin
Jim: "Dave arrived in late to the wedding yesterday, the clown"
John: "Typical. Did he bring a pressie"
Jim: "Not at all, arrived in with one arm as long as the other [emphasis added]"
So, Spanish expression "llegar con las manos colgando" seems perfectly equivalent to English "one arm as long as the other".
Best Answer
They do resemble pointing hands; especially the classic style of hour hand. Yes, they're thinner than human hands, but they point:
Etymonline says this usage of hand is over 400 years old:
Other than that, I don't think anyone can explain just why clockmakers chose hand instead of arm, or even finger. The point is that they point, like a hand.