a different kind of bird
I was watching a horrible comedian on TV and a brief part of his routine was about giving someone the finger. He wondered who the first person was to give the finger. It made me wonder, too. So I started poking around the internet.
There’s a fake story about English archers winning a battle against the French. In the fake story, the French threatened to cut off the archer’s middle finger which is required to use the English bow. When the English won the battle they presented their still intact bow fingers as an insult to the French. Makes for good reading, but apparently that never happened.
Someone got curious enough about this that they wrote a book called “Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution”. The book claims ancient Roman literature has examples of giving someone the finger (This was known as the “digitus infamis”). Here’s a quote:
“Laugh loudly, Sextillus, when someone calls you a queen and put your middle finger out.”
(The verse continues: “But you are no sodomite nor fornicator either, Sextillus, nor is Vetustina’s hot mouth your fancy.” Martial, and Roman poets in general, could be pretty out there, subject-matter-wise. Another verse begins: “You love to be sodomized, Papylus . . .”)
There’s a less stuffy book called The Finger: The Comprehensive Guide to Flipping Off that’s obviously more focused on obscene gestures rather than gestures in general. I even found a place that has a free sample of some random pages from the book.
Is giving someone the finger really thousands of years old? If it is, then why do the English use the two-fingered “v” while the Italians use the whole forearm? Maybe everyone wanted to make their finger more potent. The English thought “if one finger is bad, two will be REALLY insulting”. The Italians, not to be outdone, use the forearm as a massive middle finger. It seems there was an arms race of a different kind that has been going on for quite a while. Shouldn’t America, a country known for doing things “bigger and better” have one-upped our European counterparts by now? Perhaps our scientists are working at this very moment to splice pufffer-fish genes to human DNA so we can sponaneously inflate our middle finger while flipping someone off and thus become the most potent insulting gesture-ers (i have no idea if that’s even a word) in the WORLD!
