#WHY IS YOUR THUMB NOT A FINGER DRIVERS#

That's why you won't see the fig in movies or music videos, and why it's useless on highways. In the United States, this gesture has become innocuous, even child-friendly, as part of the nose-stealing game we all know and cherish. Try this one out for yourself: make a first, then stick your thumb between your middle and index finger. The Russian version twists our anatomical expectations by bending the middle finger of one hand back with the forefinger of the other in a gesture they call 'looking under the cat's tail.'Вќ Few offensive hand-signs attain such splendid specificity. Perhaps it's a little more ambiguous than the standard American finger, but I find it wonderfully evocative. In Arabian lands, the equivalent gesture consists of an outstretched hand, palm down, with all fingers splayed except the middle, which sticks downwards. The finger is somewhat universal, and yet, as with most things, different regions have their own variations: two of the most enriching, I think, are from the Arabs and the Russians. I can't say I fully understand.ДЄristophanes might provide the earliest literary reference to the gesture, but that's no reason to think he came up with it, or that the middle finger was offensive only to Greeks. (Some consider the fist below to serve an essential role in this resemblance to genitals.) I guess people think that's answer enough, since everyone's supposed to know already what a penis 'means,' and it's supposed to be bad. There are no convincing claims about the primordial 'meaning'Вќ of the middle finger or the origin of its disrepute, except that when it's stuck up alone it resembles a penis. Nobody can say Socrates didn't ask for it.

It was a unique way to respond to all those irritating questions. Here's what you can do with your 'Socratic method'Вќ.Д®ven before the Romans, an Athenian playwright and comedian named Aristophanes created a feisty character who gives Socrates the finger. Until, of course, one of those enemies stabbed Caligula in the neck. And the lunatic emperor Caligula - famed for such crimes as wearing women's clothes and murdering indiscriminately - was said to have habitually offered his digitus infamis to be kissed by his enemies, just to flaunt his imperial disdain.

Augustus Caesar once booted an entertainer for giving a heckler the finger. Long before punk rock and eight-lane highways, the middle finger was known as the digitus impudicus or digitus infamis (indecent or infamous digit) by Romans and medieval Europeans. It's also known as 'the bird,'Вќ a poor symbolic avian that is endlessly 'flipped'Вќ and 'flicked.'Вќ It can be displayed statically, waggling and waving, thrusting with rage, or drooping dispassionately from the hand of a rapper.

#WHY IS YOUR THUMB NOT A FINGER DRIVERS#

Or the 'expressway digit,'Вќ a remarkable single-sign code by which California drivers communicate their complex emotions. There's the 'single-digit salute'Вќ favored by punk rockers and rebellious celebrities. Like the Devil Himself, the middle finger bears many names and adopts many guises. But why is waving one of your fingers offensive? And what are some other age-old ways to express your displeasure with silly hand shapes? The Middle Finger The middle finger is one of our species' oldest and most ubiquitous insulting gestures.

Why is your thumb not a finger