Settings

The page will reload to apply your changes.
Theme

ASCII Art Font

ASCII Art Menu

Original Usenet message from alt.ascii-art, 11 Nov 2002.
Re: The History of Giving the Finger

Re: The History of Giving the Finger

> That 'pluck yew' bit sounds a tad tenuous to me. I always heard that the
> French cut *two* fingers off the English archers, so the traditional English
> salute is with two fingers up, not one. The symbol was later partly
> corrupted, partly reinvented, rather like the 'thumbs up/down' gesture, to
> one finger making a fisting reference.

Two fingers up, indeed.
I very much doubt the pl/f theory... even morphing from one to the other
the l is resilient. Afaik the word originated in elizabethan england,
where it was visibly branded onto people "For Unclean Carnal Knowledge".

OA:

      /|
     |(
    /  \
   |    `.
  /  .-,  |
 |  ,  , /
 |  ;=; '       burning match. Looks diddleable.
  \_|=|/
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    |_|

Original message headers
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: f996b,90c7c913f8c07932
X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public
X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-11-11 12:32:21 PST
Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!lnewspeer00.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!emea.uu.net!server1.netnews.ja.net!pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk!yellow.csi.cam.ac.uk!ppb23
From: Pete <ppb...@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art
Subject: Re: The History of Giving the Finger
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 20:32:13 +0000
Organization: University of Cambridge, England
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <Pin...@yellow.csi.cam.ac.uk>
References: <3DC...@erols.com> <aqp02d$d8s$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: yellow.csi.cam.ac.uk
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
X-X-Sender: ppb...@yellow.csi.cam.ac.uk
In-Reply-To: <aqp02d$d8s$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>
Xref: archiver1.google.com alt.ascii-art:20550
About this message. This message was posted publicly to the newsgroup alt.ascii-art in 2002 and is mirrored here unchanged as part of the Historic Archives – only email addresses are masked. The artwork and text belong to their original authors: if you copy a piece, keep the artist's initials or signature intact and credit them where you can. Are you the author? Contact us to get your posts attributed, connected to your artist profile, or removed.

Report this message

Help us keep the archive clean and accurate. Reports are reviewed by a person – nothing is changed automatically.

Help classify this post