Despite the lack of motion pictures and television way back in the 15th century, the details of medieval battles such as the one at Agincourt in 1415 did not go unrecorded. The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. The insulting gesture of extending one’s middle finger (referred to as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated long before the Battle of Agincourt.Īnd although the precise etymology of the English word fuck is still a matter of debate, it is linguistically nonsensical to maintain that that word entered the language because the “difficult consonant cluster at the beginning” of the phase ‘pluck yew’ has “gradually changed to a labiodental fricative ‘f.'” A labiodental fricative was no less “difficult” for Middle English speakers to pronounce than the aspirated bilabial stop/voiceless lateral combination of ‘pl’ that the fricative supposedly changed into, nor are there any other examples of such a pronunciation shift occurring in English. The basic premise that the origins of the one-finger gesture and its association with the profane word “fuck” were an outgrowth of the 1415 battle between French and English forces at Agincourt is simple enough to debunk. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as “giving the bird”. Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say (like “pleasant mother pheasant plucker”, which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows), the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative ‘f’, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. Over the years some ‘folk etymologies’ have grown up around this symbolic gesture.
Thus, when the victorious English waved their middle fingers at the defeated French, they said, “See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!” This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as “plucking yew”. The body part which the French proposed to cut off of the English after defeating them was, of course, the middle finger, without which it is impossible to draw the renowned English longbow. The puzzler was: What was this body part? This is the answer submitted by a listener:ĭear Click and Clack, Thank you for the Agincourt ‘Puzzler’, which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore and emotional symbolism. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, threatened to cut a certain body part off of all captured English soldiers so that they could never fight again. The ‘Car Talk’ show (on NPR) with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a feature called the ‘Puzzler’, and their most recent ‘Puzzler’ was about the Battle of Agincourt. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an “Is this true?” query that we are duty bound to provide a bit of historical and linguistic information demonstrating why this anecdote couldn’t possibly be accurate: An account purporting to offer the historical origins of the obscene middle-finger extended hand gesture (varously known as “flipping the bird,” “flipping someone off,” or the “one-finger salute”) is silly, and so obviously a joke that shouldn’t need any debunking.
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