Scrapper Black Dragon wrote:
> Pluck Yew (middle finger) of the Brits Vs the French when
> the froggies were threatening to cut of the 'offending
> finger' to prevent the effective use of the highly Pom's
> effective long bow (made from the wood of the Yew tree and
> the action of drawing it known as plucking yew, that
> subsequently suffered Chinese Whisper style corruption...)
>
Nah, the middle finger has meant exactly what it means today since at
least Roman times, when it was called "digitus impudicus", the indecent
finger. It's a fair bet that neanderthals were flipping each other off
shortly after inventing the loincloth.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a980904.html
On the same note, "fuck" or variants thereon show up in a number of
western languages, which suggests it hails from somewhere around
Indo-European (the lingual ancestor of everything from latin to german
to norse). In both cases, the actual origin is lost to the mists of
unrecorded history. Because really, who notes the first occurence of
obscene gestures?
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_268b.html
--
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"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day,
but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest
of his life."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)
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Received on Fri Mar 10 2006 - 02:04:37 CST