An American television network has apologised after pop star M. What does the gesture mean, and when did it become offensive? A public intellectual, expressing his contempt for a gas-bag politician, reaches for a familiar gesture.
He extends his middle finger and declares: "This is the great demagogue. The episode occurred not on a chat show nor in the salons of New York or London, but in 4th Century BC Athens, when the philosopher Diogenes told a group of visitors exactly what he thought about the orator Demosthenes, according to a later Greek historian. The middle finger, extended with the other fingers held beneath the thumb, is thus documented to have expressed insult and belittlement for more than two millennia.
Ancient Greek philosophers, Latin poets hoping to sell copies of their works, soldiers, athletes and pop stars, schoolchildren, peevish policemen and skittish network executives have all been aware of the gesture's particular power to insult and inflame. By doing it, you are offering someone a phallic gesture.
It is saying, 'this is a phallus' that you're offering to people, which is a very primeval display. During Sunday night's broadcast of the Super Bowl, America's most-watched television programme of the year, British singer M. The gesture is widely known to Americans as flipping the bird, or just giving someone the finger. The Romans had their own name for it: digitus impudicus - the shameless, indecent or offensive finger.
In the Epigrammata of First Century AD by the Latin poet Martial, a character who has always enjoyed good health extends a finger, "the indecent one", at three doctors. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that German tribesmen gave the middle finger to advancing Roman soldiers, says Thomas Conley, a professor emeritus of communication and classics at the University of Illinois, who has written about the rhetoric of insults.
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Oxford Reference. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Originally representing the erect phallus, the gesture conveys simultaneously a sexual threat to the person to whom it is directed and apotropaic means of warding off unwanted elements of the more-than-human.
In the book, Corbeill points to Priapus, a minor deity he dates to BC, which later also appears in Rome as the guardian of gardens, according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Greece and Rome here.
The decorative use of the image of Priapus matched the Roman use of images of male genitalia for warding off evil. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.
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