"mooning" origin

Jesse Sheidlower jester at PANIX.COM
Thu Feb 5 04:08:04 UTC 2004


On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 11:02:27PM -0500, Sam Clements wrote:
> A question from the Straight Dope.
>
>  Are there any examples of "mooning" (showing one's arse to
> one's opponent as a taunt) prior to the 20th century.  It
> seems like there should be, but I'm too tired to go looking.

No. Early 1960s is the earliest known, though I haven't re-checked
newspaperarchive.com to see if it has much better.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED



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