I admit it. I’ve flipped the old bird a few times in my life. Not very often, mind you. And it has been decades since I’ve raised that middle finger in the air. It mostly happened in high school, I’d say.
But here is the thing. If you’ve ever “flipped the bird,” you have something in common with ancient Greeks. Opa!
It was around 2,500 years ago that the Greeks got down and dirty with that middle finger. They developed that phallic gesture to offend, taunt and literally poke each other.
It has a definite meaning today. Throwing up a middle finger communicates a resounding “f**k you” in our little world. People use it fluently in this country.
Today’s historians have traced this back to the Greeks. Yes. They say they relied on the use of the middle finger to represent an erect penis. It was usually done as a joke. Perhaps an insult. And sometimes as a sexual proposal.
It even made show business back then. The Greek playwright Aristophanes was purportedly a fan of the gesture, referring to “the long finger” in several of his plays.
I’m not sure what sources the “historians” have in reference to the middle finger otherwise. I don’t know if there were drawings, or other historical texts written back then, but they seem pretty clear in documenting the use of the middle finger with our Greek ancestors.
They go on to say that the gesture eventually made its way to ancient Rome. The locals called it “digitus impudicus,” which translates to the indecent digit.
The Roman historian Suetonius reported that the emperor Caligula forced his subjects to kiss his middle finger – per anthropologist and leading middle-finger historian Desmond Morris. Apparently, this was a demeaning gesture that represented the ruler’s member.
The rest of the history of “the bird” ebbs and flows. The middle finger’s popularity faltered, but did not entirely disappear, during the Middle Ages. This was likely due to the growing influence of the Catholic Church. They highly disapproved of sexual gestures, researchers have concluded. Morris has said that the middle finger landed in the US with Italian immigrants in the late 19th century.
I’m not sure why we call it “the bird” today, though. Maybe when people hold it up, it is flying in the wind?
Anyway. This historian Desmond Morris has said that the middle finger we know today – the digit hoisted high in the air, other fingers bending to its will – represents a penis and testicles.
Which is reason enough for me never to use it again.
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“Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.”
– Emile Zola
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“Vulgarity shouldn’t pass off as humour.”
– Voltaire
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“The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.”
– John Adams
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Flipping the bird. Let the gestures begin. Or not.
