History of the Middle Finger

[Twinkie]

I can't vouch for the authenticity of this...


The History Of The Middle Finger

Well, now......here's something I never knew before, and now that I know it, I feel compelled to send it on to my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified. Isn't history more fun when you know something about it?

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. 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 began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! :icon_lol:

Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentals fricative F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! :icon_eek:

It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird." :eusa_shhh


And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing! :D

[acidblade]

:snoring: :snoring: :snoring: :snoring: you created a thread for this? why not.... what did you learn today?

[Manu]

Is this thing on? :eusa_eh:

[Manu]

The word F**K

****

Tracing the origin of this word has been a difficult one for etymologists and lexicographers. Because it has been a taboo word for many centuries, there is little record to go on. But modern etymologists have pieced together the history, albeit with some gaps still existing in here and there.

We know that **** is of Germanic origin. Note that is Germanic and not German–an important distinction. It does not come from the modern German verb fichen. Instead, these two words probably share a common root. **** also has cognates in other Northern European languages: the Middle Dutch fokken meaning to thrust, to copulate; the dialectical Norwegian fukka meaning to copulate; and the dialectical Swedish focka meaning to strike, push, copulate, and fock meaning *****. And both French and Italian have similar words, foutre and fottere respectively. These derive from the Latin futuere. The relation between this Latin root and the Germanic ones, if any, is uncertain.

As to exactly how English got its word, we don't know. Most of the early known usages of the English word come from Scotland and the north of England, leading some scholars to believe that the word comes from Scandinavian sources. Others disagree, believing that the number of northern citations reflects that the taboo was weaker in Scotland and the north, resulting in more surviving citations of use. The fact that there are citations, albeit fewer of them, from southern England dating from the same period seems to bear out this latter theory.

The earliest known use of **** is from c.1475 and is from a poem written in a mix of Latin and English and entitled Flen flyys. The relevant line reads:
Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli. (They [the monks] are not in heaven because they **** the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].)

Fuccant is a pseudo-Latin word and in the original it is written in cipher to further disguise it.

The current spelling dates to at least 1535, when it appears in Sir David Lyndesay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits:
Bischops . . . may **** thair fill and be vnmaryit.

Carl Buck's 1949 Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages contains a reference to a personal name, John le ****er, from the year 1278. But this citation is questionable. No one has properly identified the document this name supposedly appears in and even if it is real, the name is likely a variant of fuker, a maker of cloth, fulcher, a soldier, or another similar word.

**** was not common prior to the 1960s, at least not in published use; informal, spoken use was undoubtedly much more frequent. Shakespeare does not use it, although he did hint at it for comic effect. In Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) he gives us the pun "focative case." In Henry V (IV.iv), the character Pistol threatens to "firk" a French soldier, a word meaning to strike, but commonly used as an Elizabethan euphemism for ****. And earlier in the same play (III.iv), Princess Katherine confuses the English words foot and gown for the French foutre and coun (**** and ****, respectively) with comic results.

Other poets did use the word, although it was far from common. Robert Burns, for example, used it in his c.1800 Merry Muses (not published until 1911):
You can f––k where'er you please.

The taboo was so strong that for 170 years, from 1795 to 1965, **** did not appear in a single general dictionary of the English language. In 1948, the publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphemism fug instead, resulting in Dorothy Parker's (or maybe it was Talullah Bankhead, stories differ) comment upon meeting Mailer: "So you're the man who can't spell ****." In the late 1960s, the taboo started to break down and **** began to appear more frequently in print.

We can certainly dispense with a few of the more egregious legendary etymologies of the word.

It is not an acronym for either Fornication Under Consent of the King or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge or for anything else. Acronyms such as these are unknown before the late-19th century and not at all common until the 20th.

And the elaborate explanation concerning the Battle of Agincourt and the phrase Pluck Yew! is a joke. It was not intended to be taken seriously, although some people evidently did.

(Source: Sheidlower's The F Word; Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

[Master E]

Next time Quote it :)