History of Middle Finger
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Today, I would like to share an interesting fact about middle finger.
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of captured English soldiers. Without middle finger it would not be possible 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. 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! Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a accidentals fricative F, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one finger salute! 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.
