The bird

Fri Mar 5 00:22:55 UTC 2010

The photo in question appeared in 1996 in Geoffrey C. Ward's _Baseball_,
written to accompany Ken Burns's TV series.

As HDAS notes, _Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary_ of 1890-93 amazingly
includes the phrase "give someone the finger," somewhat lamely defined, and
with no apparent suggestion of obscenity.

My  SWAG is that the gesture became widespread/ familiar to the "educated"
in the 1880s, which seems to imply a long underground existence.

Maybe it was popularized during the Civil War.

I've never seen any documentation earlier than the photo.  In the light
of the gesture's apparent existence in Ancient Rome, one can only guess that
it may have been introduced into modern American culture by (very
conservative) Italian immigrants.  Another SWAG, of course.

JL

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      The bird
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Antedating of Wild West</TITLE></HEAD>
> <BODY>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><PRE dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial>This article
> </FONT></PRE>=
> </DIV>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2></FONT> </DIV>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2><A href=3D"
> http://www.wired.com/=
> images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/03/middlefinger.pdf" target=3D_blank>
> http://w=
> ww.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/03/middlefinger.pdf
> </A></FONT></=
> DIV>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2></FONT> </DIV>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2>indicates that shooting the
> bird=
>  (extending the middle finger) is not known (to the author, at least) in
> th=
> e United States before 1886 (see p 13 of the PDF file; p. 1415 of the
> origi=
> nal publication).</FONT></DIV>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2></FONT> </DIV>
> <DIV dir=3Dltr><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2>Can anyone on the list antedate
> =
> that?</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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