1. History Of The Middle Finger
2. History Of The Middle Finger
3. History Of The Middle Finger Snopes
4. Who Created The Middle Finger

A middle finger emoji, used in some western cultures as a rude or insulting gesture. The back of the hand is shown with the middle finger raised. Middle Finger was approved as part of Unicode 7.0 in 2014 under the name “Reversed Hand with Middle Finger Extended” and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. While Americans ‘flip the bird’ with a single middle finger, the British have traditionally achieved the same with two. The two-fingered salute, or backwards victory or V-sign, made with the middle and index fingers, is said to have originated with English archers at Agincourt in 1415. History of The Middle Finger. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree,. The “middle finger” gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. This article was produced. But why do we use our middle finger to express anger? And why do we call it “the bird.” Suggestions range from The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 to Ancient Rome. We find out the history everyone’s favorite one-finger salute in this episode.

This article is from the archive of our partner .

Last night, Anthony Weiner ended his disastrous run for mayor with a crude gesture at a reporter. Political wisdom of the act aside, it turns out that raising the middle finger — flipping the bird, as it's commonly known — has a surprisingly complex history.

The gesture is ubiquitous, but where does it come from? Well, according to a hard-hitting investigation by BBC, people having been flipping each other off since the dawn of Western civilization:

The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that German tribesmen gave the middle finger to advancing Roman soldiers...Earlier, the Greeks used the middle finger as an explicit reference to the male genitalia.

Slate notes that 'the middle finger gesture fell out of favor during the Middle Ages, likely because the Catholic Church disapproved of its sexual suggestiveness.'

With a provenance like that, it's no accident that the middle finger remains one of the truest, crudest ways to display your displeasure with another human being. First usage of the middle finger in the United States to be captured on camera is believed to have been in 1886, by pitcher Charles Radbourn:

History Of The Middle Finger

Apparently, flipping the bird even played a role in our foreign affairs, according to Yahoo:

In 1968, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea. Crew members were held and interrogated for months. Photographs of supposedly docile and well-treated crew members were released to the world press. In the photographs, many of the crew flipped the bird. Eventually, the North Koreans inquired why this hand gesture was in so many photos. The imprisoned crew explained it as the Hawaiian Good Luck Sign. For sometime, this satisfied the North Koreans. Most importantly, it shows even in 1968, flipping the bird was not a universal sign.

History Of The Middle Finger

Nor is Weiner the only New York politician to have recently shown the middle finger: former mayor David Dinkins did so when heckled three years ago. Long before that, in 1976, Nelson Rockefeller, the New York governor, gave the middle finger to protesters in Binghamton, N.Y. He is perhaps the most prominent New Yorker to have given the middle finger, which would come to be known as 'the Rockefeller gesture.'

That puts Weiner in good company, if little else does.

Photos: Anthony Weiner via Twitter; Charles Radbourn: 19C Baseball via Wikimedia Commons.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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A bit of history? with a labio dental fricative.

The History of the Middle Finger:

Well, now……here’s something I never knew before, and now that I know it, I feel compelled to send it on to my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified.

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous English longbow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as ‘plucking the yew’ (or ‘pluck yew’).

Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and they began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentalfricative ‘F’, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as ‘giving the bird.’

History Of The Middle Finger Snopes

And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing. Didn’t yew!!

Who Created The Middle Finger