Hi, >> I think this whole finger thing came from wars between the French and >> the British during medieval times. Evidently the French would remove >> this finger form British prisoners so they couldn't use a long bow >> correctly, the British would brandish the middle finger to indicate its >> continued presence and a foreshadowing of arrows to come. It may all be >> apocryphal, but I like the story anyway.
In those days they were English, not British. > It's a nice story, but it has absolutely no basis in fact. > (For a start, the English brandish two fingers, not just one.) The business about cutting off bow fingers as the origin of the English flicking a V seems to be quite well attested. I have seen it mentioned by professional historians. The Franks had a law dating to the dark ages which made it a punishable offence to cut off a bowman's draw fingers. As far as I can tell, showing someone your middle finger as an insult is a fairly recent thing here in Britain. I don't remember people doing it when I was young, and I remember thinking it was an American import when I started to see it more often. But I do remember how rude it was to flick Vs. -- Cheers, Bob
