Flipping the bird

American gestures are perhaps the most easily understood in the UK, to the extent that the single middle finger is now well on its way to replacing the traditional English V-sign. This gesture, known in America as “flipping somebody the bird” or simply “giving them the finger” has an all-too-obvious phallic connotation, suggesting that the individual at whom it is aimed is being threatened with some unwanted and implicitly painful penetration.

Legend has it that the first documented usage of the middle finger was when Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn of baseball team the Boston Beaneaters did it in a team photograph of 1886. It is not recorded what had aroused the Old Hoss’s contempt to the extent of committing such a breach of propriety. For, despite its casual and widespread use today, the middle finger is an unabashedly obscene gesture, referring so explicitly to the sexual act.

Its origins go back as far as classical antiquity, as there is a reference to a similar gesture in Greek dramatist Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds, while the Romans referred to the middle finger as the digitus impudicus, or impudent finger, as a result of its being widely used then in the way it is still known today. We can therefore see that the two-fingered English gesture is a later refinement (if that’s the right word) of a simpler, starkly obvious wordless insult.

In 2006, a motorist was fined £80 in Colchester for insulting a speed camera with his middle finger. This was deemed to be an offence under the terms of the Public Order Act 1984, even though he was driving within the legal speed limit when he made the gesture.

In Arabic societies, there is an inverted version of the one-finger salute, in which the finger points downward, often accompanied by a vigorous downward movement of the hand. Directed at a man you are intending to insult, this is an imputation of impotence and, as such, deeply shaming.

Cocking a snook

The action of putting the hand sideways on to the nose with the thumb touching it and the (optionally wiggling) fingers splayed out is a common gesture of ridicule. It shows the person it is aimed at that you refuse to take them seriously. This is quite widely recognised throughout Europe, and dates back several centuries, being found in book illustrations, and as a stage gesture in Italian commedia dell’arte performances made by the Harlequin character against pompous authority figures. Its name in many European languages is “the long nose”. Find out more about commedia dell’arte here.

The forearm jerk

This gesture, now slightly old-fashioned in the UK, involves thrusting one forearm with clenched fist upwards, while clapping the other hand to the horizontal upper arm. In Britain, it has traditionally been a sign of lewd sexual appreciation, made by a man about a woman he would like to go to bed with.

Throughout southern Europe, however, from end to end of the Mediterranean, and also to some extent in France and Germany, this gesture is an obscene sexual insult. In some ways, it is an exaggerated version of the single middle finger, but with the male organ represented more intimidatingly by a whole forearm. Used by one man against another, it implies a desire to see the recipient sexually humiliated, not necessarily by the gesturer, but by some other creature, either human or animal.

Rabbit ears

The gesture much beloved of mischievous boys seeking to make somebody look ridiculous in a photograph, and which involves placing the hand with two fingers (the forefinger plus either the middle finger or little finger) erect behind someone’s head, preferably without their knowledge, is seen as a harmless bit of fun in Britain. When a 16-year-old boy did this to Cherie Blair during a photocall in Glasgow in September 2006, the prime minister’s wife found herself the subject of police questioning for motioning to slap the boy in jest.

Outside Britain, this is a much more serious gesture. The two erect fingers are interpreted to mean horns rather than ears, horns being the traditional symbol of a cuckold, a man whose wife has cheated on him with another man. As a serious allegation against another, the gesture dates back to the days when adultery was actually a crime. To imply that another man has been usurped in the marital bed was thus to say that not only had he been sexually deceived, but that he was unwittingly tolerating a breach of the moral and legal code. This meaning is still widely assigned throughout Spain and Italy to what we unsuspectingly call the rabbit-ear gesture.

Thumbs up

While the raised thumb is almost universally recognised as a symbol of confirmation, approval or congratulation (or as a way of asking for a free lift from a passing car), there are one or two corners of the world where it might get you into trouble. In parts of the Greek mainland and on Sardinia, the erect thumb is the same kind of sexually loaded insult that the raised middle finger is elsewhere. The only reason a Sardinian driver might stop if you stuck your thumb up at him might be to land one on you.

In many Arabic countries, the thumbs-up sign translates roughly as “Up yours!”, so perhaps those American and British soldiers having Iraqi thumbs raised towards them as they drive past might be best advised not to congratulate themselves too much on the warm welcome being shown them by the locals. Even other English-speaking countries may be capable of interpreting this gesture the wrong way. It is a distinctly unfriendly sign to make, for example, to an Australian.

And finally…

A gesture much favoured by white van drivers to inform other road-users that their driving skills are not all they might be consists of closing the fingers and thumb around an imaginary object, and then agitating them upwards and downwards. The gesture implies that the recipient is one of those unfortunate souls whose only hope of sexual relief is at his own hands. There is a name for people like you, the gesture announces, and it isn’t polite.