ANST - History of a gesture - true/false?

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

Lord Manfred Wolf / Joe Wolf <WolfJ at bisys.com> wrote:
> This was forwarded to me by a friend... I have no idea if
> this is true or an 'urban myth!'  Seems plausible enough to
> be valid... would anyone have any firm research to
> confirm/deny this?

(By the way, please hit Enter or in some other way insure
that your lines are less than about 70-80 characters long.
Some mailers and mail transfer programs, like the ones I
use, have problems with that.  The above paragraph, as sent
in mail, was one line 187 characters long.  At the end of
the message were two lines, each having 992 spaces followed
by an exclamation point.)

Anyway, it was the Agincourt story for the origin of giving
the finger, "f*** you", and "giving the bird".
Alt.folklore.urban has debunked the story.  I went to

http://www.urbanlegends.com/search/search.html#tafkac

and searched for "finger".  The first match, Misc/middle
finger, is a good article.  A British poster noted "the
'middle finger' gesture has only caught on over here in the
last decade or so, almost certainly under 'merkin
influence."

The person replying cited "_Gestures: Their Origins and
Distribution_, by Desmond Morris et alii (1979) surveys the
use and meanings of twenty emblematic gestures based on 1200
interviews in 40 cities in Europe."

"The middle-finger jerk was so popular among the Romans that
they even gave a special name to the middle digit, calling
it the impudent finger: _digitus impudicus_ ... obscene
finger, or infamous finger ... Martial (Epigrams vi.lxx):
'he points his finger, nd the insulting one at that, towards
Alcon...'  According to Suetonius, Pylades was banished from
Italy for making the obscene middle-finger gesture at a
critical member of the audience who was trying to hiss him
from the stage."

(He also notes, "the Roman Colloseum _pollice verso_
('turned thumb', i.e. 'kill him!') was a mimetic stabbing
thumbs-*up*, and modern usage has reversed this".)

As for "f***": comes from a German root "ficken" or some
such, meaning "to strike (as with a stick)", if memory
serves.  It's a lot older than Agincourt, and so is the word.

(To debunk another legend: no, it's not a new word formed as
an acronym, either, like "Fornication Under Command of the
King".  In English, such word creation is a purely 20th
Century phenomenon.)

Can't help with "giving the bird", but it seems *really*
*really* unlikely, even if it weren't linked with an
exploded story.  Folk etymology has spawned a hell of a lot
of preposterous explanations for the origins and meanings of
words.

Daniel "signifying nothing" de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel.   Reply to tmcd at crl.com; if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com
is work account.  tmcd at tmcd.austin.tx.us ... is wrong tool.  Never use this.

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