"the finger" in 1932 Hollywood epic (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Dan Goncharoff]

Is it possible we are confusing two different umpire gestures? Throwing
someone out of the game often involves pointing to the clubhouse or the
dugout, and does not use the thumb.

DanG


On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "the finger" in 1932 Hollywood epic (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
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>
> 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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