Found a flute on ebay and I don’t know what that is on it. Any ideas?
A built-in handy-dandy corkscrew so you can have wine afterwards?
crutch
about 2/3 down this page
Thank you Denny.
[quote]A ‘crutch’ or thumb-rest was provided with a German model Boehm flute. This was thought to ease the left hand’s role in supporting the flute so that the thumb and fingers could work more freely. Both the Mönnig and Meinell flutes have this. The crutch was wooden and T-shaped; one end fit into a holder under the flute and the base fit between the left hand thumb and first finger. Its use was optional. But outside of Germany it was often thought useless or even detrimental to freedom of the left hand.[quote]
I played for a few minutes in a shop a flute with a hand crutch and found it
interesting and comfortable. I would have needed a good deal more time
to judge whether it was for me, but I find the option intriguing.
Might be a big help to some people who want more extension
of the fingers, and a number of people might just find
it comfortable.
Feh, not for me. As they say in N’Awlins, ‘I wouldn’t give a crippled crab a crutch’. Good space for a very small billboard, though.
My modern silver piccolo has a crutch. Since the diameter of the piccolo is so small, the crutch makes it easier to hold the piccolo and places the left-hand fingers in a better position.
Interesting, I never knew what it was called. Crutch is so pejorative, ugh. Isn’t there a nicer concise term, like crook rest? Thumb rest doesn’t really describe it.
It certainly should be!!!
Afterwards? What about before and during the meal. 
Then music.
How about “armature” or “prosthesis”?
Thumbature?
Brace, rest, support, prop…? What next, calling a cheater an embouchure aid?
“Crutch” is fine! What’s pejorative about it? They’ve always been called that in English. I don’t think there’s anything pejorative about mentioning the Long John Silver type either. Your hypersensitive American pseudo-political-correctness hasn’t got a leg to stand on! 
Oh, and here’s the flute on eBay.
Not necessarily a PC thing, crutch in the US a secondary meaning
Crutch > anything that serves as a temporary and often inappropriate support, supplement, or substitute; prop: He uses liquor as a psychological crutch.
Yeah, it has that (extended from the basic) sense in GB English too - I was trying to think of a play on or reference to it for my last post… but nothing suitable came sufficiently readily to mind. Of course, the word is cognate with “crotch” - and one tends to insert crutches into crotches… and the “original” home-made, crude, LJS leg-substitute crutch was stereotypically fabricated from a forked (crotched) stick.
It is still available here.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/320837383382?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649#ht_1145wt_827