Stretching the middle finger by withdrawing the other fingers, everyone knows what it means. This insulting gesture, which kindly invites you to “go to be seen”, is widely accepted worldwide (with a few exceptions). Trying him out in the street, from New York to Madrid, will be doubted, no doubt, big troubles.
How did we get there? How was a simple gesture of the hand was commonly accepted as being offensive? You have to go back to several centuries, even millennia, behind to find its origin. Because yes, the finger of honor has absolutely nothing modern.
“Illudicus Digitus” and symbol of the phallus
If we search the archives of history, we find the very first traces of the finger of honor at IVe century BC. Everything then happens in ancient Greece, where Diogenes of Sinope, a famous philosopher as cynical as provocative, would have tried this gesture in front of a crowd who came to listen to him. He would have launched, major in the air: “This is the one who governs the people of Athens!” The recipient of the insult? Demosphene, an Athenian statesman whom Diogenes despised more than anything.
It’s all good, but that doesn’t answer the question: why is this gesture insulting? To understand, it is necessary to dissect the word which, at the time, defined it. What is called today the “finger of honor” was then named katapygon: a combination of the Greek word kata“Down”, and pugē“Buttocks”. An explicit sexual connotation to say the least, perceived as a mockery act – which will remain, without bad pun, in the annals.
A few centuries later, it was among the Romans that there is again a trace of this adult raised towards the sky. We nickname him then Digitus Iludicusliterally the “shameless finger”. For what? Because it represents an erect phallus, the folded fingers being supposed to symbolize the testicles. Show your dick: that is original!
So original, that the gesture already seems particularly widespread at the time. As the Roman historian Tacitus said (58-120 AD), the Germanic tribes even used it to provoke … Roman legions before a fight. Its primitive and universal symbolism explains, in a doubt, its relentless success.
A second youth with the Hundred Years War
However, imposing yourself in customs and going through the centuries is not an easy thing (ask Tecktonik, for example). Thus, the finger of honor has experienced less splendid periods, starting with the Middle Ages. Religion, particularly influential during this period of history, condemned all the practices which it considered as “unnatural”, in particular sodomy. No bowl for the finger of honor, which then dragged its sexual symbolism like a burden.
But not enough to make it disappear completely! The finger of honor resists, makes a round back, until you have a second youth in the XVe century. According to a tenacious hypothesis, it was during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), which opposes the French to the English, that the finger of honor is truly a place of choice in our culture.
When the French soldiers captured one of the formidable English archers, they cut his index and the middle finger, just to prevent him from handling an arc in the future. To respond to this threat, British archers would have gotten into the habit of brandishing these two fingers to the enemy before the battles, to signify that they were always able to fight. A gesture that will evolve over time: on the French side, it is the erected adult that will remain; On the Anglo-Saxon side, a kind of inverted “V”, formed with the index and the middle finger, palm back. Both with the same meaning, that of going to be seen.
Today, the finger of honor has somewhat lost its sexual connotation, replaced by a simple manifestation of anger or contempt. But it does not have the same symbolism all over the world. In Iran or Afghanistan, for example, the erect adult has not even really meaning. Conversely, the thumbs up-Gestion perceived as positive in the West-is interpreted there as an insult, more or less equivalent to the finger of honor. But that’s another story.
