We're getting a little silly here, but I think it's both force and pressure. Any force will exert a corresponding pressure (which is merely "force per unit are

We're getting a little silly here, but I think it's both force and pressure. Any force will exert a corresponding pressure (which is merely "force per unit area"). To say that we don't feel the force of weight except as a pressure is getting overly pedantic; we don't generally think of carried objects as exerting a certain pressure on us, we think of them as being more or less "heavy", i.e., as having weight. Okay, the explanation for specific case of fingers being cut (while getting no cut in other cases) depends on the weight being applied to small area. . . :) But it is still perfectly true that the weight of the object cuts the fingers.