The ‘center finger salute’ is derived from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed by the French on the Battle of Agincourt.
Origin
An account purporting to supply the historic origins of the obscene middle-finger prolonged hand gesture (varously often called “flipping the hen,” “flipping somebody off,” or the “one-finger salute”) is foolish, and so clearly a joke that should not want any debunking. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an “Is that this true?” question that we’re obligation certain to supply a little bit of historic and linguistic info demonstrating why this anecdote could not probably be correct:
The ‘Automotive Discuss’ present (on NPR) with Click on and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a characteristic referred to as the ‘Puzzler’, and their most up-to-date ‘Puzzler’ was in regards to the Battle of Agincourt. The French, who had been overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, threatened to chop a sure physique half off of all captured English troopers in order that they might by no means struggle once more. The English gained in a significant upset and waved the physique half in query on the French in defiance. The puzzler was: What was this physique half? That is the reply submitted by a listener:
Pricey Click on and Clack, Thanks for the Agincourt ‘Puzzler’, which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore and emotional symbolism. The physique half which the French proposed to chop off of the English after defeating them was, in fact, the center finger, with out which it’s unattainable to attract the famend English longbow.
This well-known weapon was made from the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was often called “plucking yew”.
Thus, when the victorious English waved their center fingers on the defeated French, they mentioned, “See, we are able to nonetheless pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!”
Over time some ‘folks etymologies’ have grown up round this symbolic gesture. Since ‘pluck yew’ is moderately troublesome to say (like “nice mom pheasant plucker”, which is who you needed to go to for the feathers used on the arrows), the troublesome consonant cluster at first has steadily modified to a labiodental fricative ‘f’, and thus the phrases typically used at the side of the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have one thing to do with an intimate encounter. It’s also due to the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is named “giving the hen”.
And yew all thought yew knew all the pieces!
The essential premise that the origins of the one-finger gesture and its affiliation with the profane phrase “fuck” had been an outgrowth of the 1415 battle between French and English forces at Agincourt is straightforward sufficient to debunk. The insulting gesture of extending one’s center finger (known as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated lengthy earlier than the Battle of Agincourt.
And though the exact etymology of the English phrase fuck continues to be a matter of debate, it’s linguistically nonsensical to keep up that that phrase entered the language as a result of the “troublesome consonant cluster at first” of the section ‘pluck yew’ has “steadily modified to a labiodental fricative ‘f.'” A labiodental fricative was no much less “troublesome” for Center English audio system to pronounce than the aspirated bilabial cease/unvoiced lateral mixture of ‘pl’ that the fricative supposedly become, nor are there another examples of such a pronunciation shift occurring in English.
The navy facets of this account are equally specious. Regardless of the dearth of movement photos and tv method again within the fifteenth century, the main points of medieval battles such because the one at Agincourt in 1415 didn’t go unrecorded. Battles had been noticed and chronicled by heralds who had been current on the scene and recorded what they noticed, judged who gained, and glued names for the battles. These heralds weren’t a part of the collaborating armies, however had been, as navy skilled John Keegan describes, members of an “worldwide company of consultants who regulated civilized warfare.” A number of heralds, each French and English, had been current on the battle of Agincourt, and never certainly one of them (or any later chroniclers of Agincourt) talked about something in regards to the French having minimize off the fingers of captured English bowman.
And for quite a lot of causes, it made no navy sense in anyway for the French to seize English archers, then mutilate them by slicing off their fingers. Medieval warriors did not take prisoners as a result of by doing so that they had been observing an ethical code that dictated opponents who had laid down their arms and ceased preventing should be handled humanely, however as a result of they knew high-ranking captives had been useful property that could possibly be ransomed for cash. The ransoming of prisoners was the one method for medieval troopers to make a fast fortune, and they also seized each accessible alternative to seize opponents who could possibly be exchanged for good-looking costs.
Bowman weren’t useful prisoners, although: they stood outdoors the chivalric system and had been thought-about the social inferiors of men-at-arms. There was no financial reward to be obtained by capturing them, nor was there any glory to be gained by defeating them in battle. As John Keegan wrote in his historical past of warfare: “To fulfill a equally outfitted opponent was the event for which the armoured soldier educated maybe every single day of his life from the onset of manhood. To fulfill and beat him was a triumph, the very best type which self-expression may take within the medieval nobleman’s lifestyle.” Archers weren’t the “equally outfitted” opponents that armored troopers triumphed in defeating — if the 2 clashed in fight, the armored soldier would both kill an archer outright or depart him to bleed to loss of life moderately than go to the wasteful effort of taking him prisoner.
Furthermore, if archers may be ransomed, then slicing off their center fingers can be a mindless transfer. Your opponent will not be going to pay you (or pay you a lot) for the return of mutilated troopers, so now what do you do with them? Tackle the burden and expense of caring for them? Kill them outright and violate the medieval ethical code of civilized warfare? (Certainly, Henry V was closely criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt.)
And even when killing prisoners of conflict didn’t violate the ethical code of the instances, what can be the aim of taking archers captive, slicing off their fingers, and then executing them? Why not merely kill them outright within the first place? Do you come these prisoners to your opponents in alternate for nothing, thereby offering them with educated troopers who can struggle towards you one other day? (Even when archers whose center fingers had been amputated may now not successfully use their bows, they had been nonetheless able to wielding mallets, battleaxes, swords, lances, daggers, maces, and different weapons, as archers sometimes did when the opponents closed ranks with them and the preventing turned hand-to-hand.)
Final, however definitely not least, would not these insolent archers have been bragging about plucking a bow’s string, and never the wooden of the bow itself?
A lot for “historical past.”
Sources
Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Do’s and Taboos of Physique Language Across the World.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. 33-35).
Keegan, John. The Face of Battle.
New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. 78-116).
Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. A Dictionary of Superstitions.
Oxford: Oxford College Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454).
