"the finger" in 1932 Hollywood epic (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Victor Steinbok]

Oh, I was not disagreeing with this position at all--it seems quite
likely to me that this is exactly what was going on, since we don't even
know the identity of the finger (i.e., which of the fingers was
involved). Ironically, I probably learned more about the history of
baseball than about the actual game in the last 30 years. But "giving
the finger" sounds just as plausible IMO as a baseball expression as
"giving the thumb". I am also very suspicious of the Roman descent
theory. In the 1980s, I've seen Italians throwing one hand against the
other as an insulting gesture, but I did not see them flipping the bird.
Perhaps different parts of Italy have different gestures and they may
still be responsible for bringing the gesture to the US. Or maybe that
Roman history is just another urban legend.

     VS-)

On 5/14/2012 6:18 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> some using the index finger, as if pointing to the imaginary out-door
> Do we really know that this is recent? What I'm getting at is the
> possibility that "give the finger" was originally a baseball expression
> *not* referring explicitly to the obscene gesture - which may not have had
> a name. Sounds crazy even as I write it, but consider that even today the
> related forearm gesture doesn't have a common name!
>
> Of course "the finger" seems obvious (but so does *"the arm").
>
> Anyway, the Italian hypothesis comes not from certain knowledge but from
> the conventional   wisdom that the finger gesture descends from Roman days.
>
> Or perhaps it descends from Roman days only through Classical allusions.
>
> JL

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