history of the middle finger

[Dragonfly5338]

Well, now......here's something I never knew before, and now that I
know it, I feel compelled to send it on to my more intelligent
friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified. Isn't history
more fun
when you know something about it?
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating
victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of
all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be
impossible to draw the renowned English long bow 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" (or
"pluck 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 labiodentals
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."

Actually, that's a bit off. The French would cut off the first finger and the middle finger of English bowmen so they couldn't draw their bows. Hence, the English version of our one-fingered salute of the backwards "V" for victory sign, with the palm facing you, to prove to the enemy that they still had their two bow fingers intact.

The history of the word "fuck" is rather hazy, and there's more than a few urban legends about where fuck came from, but most historians say it's of Germanic decent.

Here's what I could find:

Common Germanic fuk-, by an application of Grimm's law, would have as its most likely Indo-European ancestor *pug-, which appears in Latin and Greek words meaning "fight" and "fist". In early Common Germanic the word was likely used at first as a slang or euphemistic replacement for an older word for intercourse, and then became the usual word for intercourse. Then, fuck has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as Middle Dutch fokken (to thrust, copulate, or to breed), dialectical Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectical Swedish focka (to strike, copulate) and fock (penis).

There is perhaps even an original Celtic derivation; futuere being related to battuere (to strike, to copulate); which may be related to Irish bot and Manx bwoid (penis). The argument is that battuere and futuere (like the Irish and Manx words) comes from the Celtic *bactuere (to pierce), from the root buc- (a point). Or perhaps Latin futuere came from the root fu, Common Indo-European bhu, meaning "be, become" and originally referred to procreation.

[MachNU]

Actually, that's a bit off. The French would cut off the first finger and the middle finger of English bowmen so they couldn't draw their bows. Hence, the English version of our one-fingered salute of the backwards "V" for victory sign, with the palm facing you, to prove to the enemy that they still had their two bow fingers intact.

Yep thats correct!!!