History of the Middle Finger
=I never knew this before,and now that I know it, I feel compelled tosend it on to my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too, will feeledified. Isn ' t history more fun when you know something about it?
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory overthe English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured Englishsoldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renownedEnglish longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in thefuture. 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 beganmocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French,saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Since ' pluck yew ' is rather difficult tosay, the difficult consonant cluster at thebeginning has gradually changed to a labiodentals fricative F ' , andthus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! It is alsobecause of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that thesymbolic gesture is known as ' giving the bird
(And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing.)
