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From: rabuzzi@patch.tandem.com (Matthew Rabuzzi)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Click and Clack puzzler - Battle of Agincourt
Date: 26 May 1996 08:51:13 GMT

Phil Edwards <news-uk@dircon.co.uk> writes: : Lee Jones wrote:
: >
: > The English, of course, won the battle, and have been proudly displaying
: > that particular bit of their anatomy ever since as a taunt to the French.
: >
: > My Dad's theory is that [the bit of anatomy was] the middle finger
:
: OK, except that the "middle finger" gesture has only caught on over here
: in the last decade or so, almost certainly under 'merkin influence.

_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 ecological niche for "fuck you/up yours/bugger off" is occupied by the palm-facing-in V-sign in GB, by the "bras d'honneur" clenched-fistforearm -jerk-with-other-hand-restraining-it on the Continent, and the vertical-middle-finger-stab in the US. Interestingly,

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, and 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. There were other obscene gestures in use in Ancient Rome, but the forearm jerk...we have been unable to find any early references to.

There are meanings other than phallic domination/hostility described for all of these gestures, of course.

: This story is in circulation here, however, as an explanation for the
: V-sign. This being, not what Churchill did, but the same gesture the
: other way round, which means... pretty much the same as the one with the
: middle finger. (Which we don't even have a name for).

The palm-in V-sign correlates with "fuck you" throughout GB, and is natively understood to mean "victory" or "two" everywhere else, according to Desmond's study. For the origins of V as sexual insult, he examines ten different theories, easily debunking the first one:

In the case of the V-for-Victory sign we know, for once, the exact date on which the gesture was invented and the name of its inventor. It was not Churchill himself, although it was he who made it famous. It was a Belgian lawyer named Victory De Lavelaye ... Jan 14 1941. De Lavelaye was unhappy about the use of the letters RAF as a resistance graffito. The letters were being scrawled on walls in Belgium by the underground, as a method of insulting the Nazis, but in a foreign language they lacked clarity and he was looking for something simpler... He hit on the idea of V for Victory because it fitted not only the English word, but also the Flemish _vrijheid_ and the French _victoire_. After his initial broadcast, proposing the V, the BBC mounted a highly successful propaganda campaign employing the morse code symbol for V (dot-dot-dot-dash) and the opening bars of Beethovens' Fifth Symphony. It was after this that Churchill took up the sign and used it publicly at every opportunity. Nazi propagandists became so alarmed at the success of the symbol, that they started their own counter-project, V for _Viktoria_, but it was too late. ...

The earliest record of the insult-V...comes from...Rabelais: Panurge...'stretched he out the forefinger, and middle finger or medical of his right hand, holding them asunder as much as he could, and thrusting them towards Thaumast.' ... The earliest photograph...taken at a football match in 1913.

I heartily advise reading _Gestures_ to get the inside skinny on:

• how simply *touching* your upper arm is a cryptic "bras d'honneur" in Malta, where the real thing is an arrestable offense
• one theory of the fig (fico)'s origin, the defeated Milanese being forced by Barbarossa to pull with their teeth a fig from an ass's ass (literal sycophancy!)
• the Roman Colloseum _pollice verso_ ("turned thumb", i.e. "kill him!") was a mimetic stabbing thumbs-*up*, and modern usage has reversed this
• and all kinds of stuff about the cuckold's horns, the devil's horns, the ring as "ok" and as "orifice", "I bite my thumb at you, sir", cocking a snook (thumbing one's nose), and a dozen more

Sorry, guess this has turned into a book review. 300 pages, no footnotes, but about 400 bibliographical references.

Matthew "by the pricking of my thumbs, sod off" Rabuzzi