Here's a slightly more generic version of 3dan's answer. I prefer to think of them not as exceptions but as a primary sort key, derived through a hash lookup with a default of 0, with the straight cmp of the strings being the secondary sort key.

use strict;
use warnings;

my %rank = (
    tonsil      => -2,  # sorts very first
    foot        => -1,  # sorts before most
    hand        => 1,   # sorts after most
    chin        => 1,   # sorts after most
    pinky       => 2,   # sorts very last
);

sub rank_sort { ($rank{$a}||0) <=> ($rank{$b}||0) || $a cmp $b }

my @list = qw/leg hand chin eye pinky foot jaw tonsil finger/;

print join(" ", sort rank_sort @list), $/;
[download]

Note that if two different elements have the same rank, they will be determinately sorted, rather than depending on perl's sort stability (or lack thereof).