Flipping the bird? and Morse

[jester at PANIX.COM]

>
> A (non-linguist) coworker of mine is curious about the origins of the phrase
> "flipping the bird".  I couldn't find anything in my copy of the Random
> House HDAS, but I only looked quickly.  Any answers?

This term is covered in detail in HDAS s.v. _bird_ n. III.9. The
sense referring to "the finger" and often (though by no means
exclusively) used with _flip_ is subdefinition d, first cited in
1966.

Jesse Sheidlower
Oxford English Dictionary
<jester at panix.com>