You have other stories of how the showing the middle finger means "Fuck You" eh?
Found 2 articles on this.
1.
In Western cultures, the finger (as in giving someone the finger) is a well-known obscene hand gesture made by extending the middle finger of the hand while bending the other fingers into the palm. A known variation includes extending the thumb as well.
The gesture is also known as the "bird", "flipping the bird", "flipping someone off", "shooting a bird", "flying the bird", "telling me I'm number one", "the single-finger/one-fingered salute", "birdie worthy's", or innumerable other obscure monikers. When both hands are used (for emphasis), it may be known as the "double-barreled salute/giving both barrels", the "double deuce","space docking", a "double whammy" or the "dirty double".
2.
Most likely derived from Ancient Greece, ‘the finger’ is one of the most widespread obscene gestures throughout the Western world. In a handful of Mediterranean and Arab countries the index finger is preferred to the middle, but the meaning remains crystal clear. There are a myriad of different stories for the origin of the finger (going back as far as 2500 years), making mention of Greek tragedies, phallic representation, perverse Roman emperors, English longbowmen, and annoyed deaf people - but we just don’t know.
Also known as the ‘flip-off’, the ‘bird’, the ‘highway salute’, ‘digitus impudicus’ and the ‘One-Fingered Victory Salute’ (thanks to President Bush’s famous TV blooper), the middle finger is probably the most universally-understood hand gesture in the world. This is owed mostly to its age, the sheer simplicity of the gesture, as well as the human preoccupation with somehow relating everything back to sexual organs.
Of course there are regional differences, from half-extending the second and fourth fingers (no doubt to represent the ‘balls’ either side of the middle finger ‘dick’) or combining the finger with another rude gesture, to being as creative as holding up your middle three fingers and telling your target to “read between the lines”.
Claim: The 'middle finger salute' is derived from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed by the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
Status: False.
Origins: The piece quoted above is silly, and so obviously a joke that shouldn't need any debunking. Nonetheless, so many have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" query that we feel duty-bound to provide a bit of historical and linguistic information to demonstrate why this story couldn't possibly be true.
First of all, despite the lack of motion pictures and television way back in the 15th century, the details of medieval battles such as the one at Agincourt in 1415 did not go unrecorded. Battles were observed and chronicled by heralds who were present at the scene and recorded what they saw, judged who won, and fixed names for the battles. These heralds were not part of the participating armies, but were, as military expert John Keegan describes, members of an "international corporation of experts who regulated civilized warfare." Several heralds — both French and English — were present at the battle of Agincourt, and not one of them (or any later chroniclers of Agincourt) mentioned anything about the French having cut off the fingers of captured English bowman.
Secondly, for a variety of reasons, it made no military sense whatsoever for the French to capture English archers, then mutilate them by cutting off their fingers. Medieval warriors did not take prisoners because they were observing a moral code that dictated that opponents who laid down their arms and ceased fighting must be treated humanely; they took prisoners because high-ranking captives were valuable property that could be ransomed for money. The ransoming of prisoners was the only way for medieval soldiers to make a quick fortune, and so they seized every available opportunity to capture opponents who could be exchanged for a handsome price.
Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though; they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. There was no monetary reward to be obtained by capturing them, nor was there any glory to be won by defeating them in battle. As Keegan wrote, "To meet a similarly equipped opponent was the occasion for which the armoured soldier trained perhaps every day of his life from the onset of manhood. To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." Archers were not the "similarly equipped" opponents that armored soldiers triumphed in defeating; if the two clashed in combat, the armored soldier would either kill an archer
outright or leave him to bleed to death rather than go to the wasteful effort of taking him prisoner.
Moreover, if archers could be ransomed, then cutting off their middle fingers would be a senseless move. Your opponent is not going to pay you (or pay you much) for the return of mutilated soldiers, so now what do you do with them? Take on the burden and expense of caring for them? Kill them outright and violate the medieval moral code of civilized warfare? (Henry V was heavily criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt.)
Even if killing prisoners of war did not violate the moral code of the times, what would be the purpose of cutting off fingers and then executing these same people? Why not simply kill them outright in the first place? Do you return these prisoners to your opponents in exchange for nothing, thereby providing them with trained soldiers who can fight against you another day? (Even if archers whose middle fingers had been amputated could no longer effectively use their bows, they were still capable of wielding mallets, battleaxes, swords, lances, daggers, maces, and other weapons, as archers typically did — and as they indeed did at Agincourt — when the opponents closed ranks with them and the fighting became hand-to-hand.)
So much for history. There's not much that makes linguistic sense here, either. The claim that the "difficult consonant cluster at the beginning" of the phase 'pluck yew' has "gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'f'" is specious. A labiodental fricative was no less "difficult" for Middle English speakers to pronounce than the aspirated bilabial stop/voiceless lateral combination of 'pl' that the fricative supposedly changed into, nor are there any other examples of such a shift occurring in English. As well, the etymology of the word 'fuck' indicates that the word originated in a completely different time, place, and manner than the absurd version presented here. And on top of all that, the insulting gesture of extending one's middle finger (digitus impudicus in Latin) dates from Roman times (at least 2,000 years ago), so it obviously was not developed in conjunction with the creation of the English word 'fuck.'"
Last but certainly not least, wouldn't these insolent archers have been bragging about plucking the bow's string, and not the wood of the bow itself?
The 'V' sign with the palm facing outwards mean victory but with the palm facing inwards mean "up yours"
Also, from what i was told, FUCK stands for Fornicate Under the Consent of the King.This is what i was told when studying in Glasgow in the nineties.
07-10-2008, 07:40 PM
