The middle finger ages

MIA's Superbowl salute has, no doubt as intended, sparked a probe of the history of the single-digit insult.

In America they call it flipping the bird. The Romans referred to digitus impudicus. And further back still, in Ancient Greece, it was known as the κατάπυγον (katapugon, from kata – κατά, “downwards” and pugē – πυγή, ‘rump, buttocks’” (thanks, Wikipedia).

When the singer MIA unleashed it, raising her middle finger to the hardworking people of America during the Superbowl halftime hoopla, she ignited a national controversy the likes of which has not seen since the last time someone did something mildly controversial during the Superbowl halftime hoopla. This time, even Madonna was cross about it.

The people at GQ were sufficiently moved by it all to compile a photographic tribute to the “History of Our Country’s Proud Heritage” – complete with 30 examples of proud Americans (Madonna included) bird-flipping.

The excitement has prompted the online BBC News Magazine to probe the history of the salute.

“A public intellectual, expressing his contempt for a gas-bag politician, reaches for a familiar gesture. He extends his middle finger and declares: ‘This is the great demagogue,’” writes Daniel Nasaw, drawing us closer around the campfire.

The episode occurred not on a chat show nor in the salons of New York or London, but in 4th Century BC Athens, when the philosopher Diogenes told a group of visitors exactly what he thought about the orator Demosthenes, according to a later Greek historian.

It is “one of the most ancient insult gestures known”, the anthropologist Desmond Morris tells the Magazine. “You are offering someone a phallic gesture. It is saying, ‘this is a phallus’ that you’re offering to people, which is a very primeval display.” (He goes into more anatomical detail, if you need it, but for all I know you’re eating your cornflakes.)

And what of the British two-digit variation? Morris reckons it’s simply a “double phallus”. The alternative is probably apocryphal, but far too good a story not to tell.

According to legend it was first displayed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 … English soldiers waved their fingers at French soldiers who had threatened to cut off captured archers’ first two fingers to prevent them shooting arrows. The English were thus boasting they were still capable of doing so.

Probably not true, alas. And nor is the urban legend that a phrase emerged thereof: “pluck yew”.