Heard on Jerry Springer: "the bird is the word"

[Wilson Gray]

Two mid-twenty-ish black men, cousins from somewhere behind the Cotton
Curtain, judging by their speech patterns, are having an argument, one
having confessed to having had sex with the other's girlfriend. One
asks, clearly referring to the other's genitalia - he points to them -
"Why did you take out your _bird_, man? What made you pull out your
_bird_?"


I first heard the gesture, "the finger," referred to as "the bird" -
she had to explain to me what she meant -  ca.1971 at UC Davis by a
female classmate from the wilds of the Deep Northern California
boondocks. I've since heard it randomly used, here and there.

However, this is the first time that I've ever heard the penis
referred to as "your _bird_."

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org