Stupid Question ™

May 11, 2000

By John Ruch

© 2000

Q: Is it true that “giving the finger” was started by archers in the Battle of Agincourt, and that it’s called “giving the bird” because of arrow feathers?

—J Out

A: Making the rounds on Internet joke sites since at least 1997, this bizarre rumor attempts to kill two birds (so to speak) with one stone.

It claims that before the 1415 Battle of Agincourt—the pivotal battle in the English-French Hundred Years War—the French threatened to cut off the middle fingers of English archers so they couldn’t draw their bows. When the English won the battle, the archers waved their middle fingers in defiance. Inspired by the feathers on their arrows, they called the gesture “the bird.”

Not only that, but they also shouted, “Pluck yew!” since they could still “pluck” their yew-wood bows. Over the years this phrase was mistaken for “fuck you,” and people came to think of the middle finger as obscene rather than a sign of military defiance.

A small problem here: the middle finger as an obscene gesture is unknown in Britain (except recently as a US import).

Instead, Britain’s obscene gesture is a V-sign, with the back of the hand facing outward. And this Agincourt tale was invented by someone over there—as an explanation for the V-sign! (Of course, in their version, it’s the first two fingers that were to be cut off.)

The story appears in some British pop histories; the Americanized version was apparently popularized around late 1996 by the quiz section of the humorous public radio show “Car Talk.”

No matter the version (and there are at least two in Britain), there’s absolutely no evidence for, and lots of evidence against, this story.

English archers were indeed key at Agincourt (a battle as mythic to the British as Bunker Hill is to Americans), and it’s possible the French really did threaten to mutilate them, though I couldn’t find any primary source for the claim.

But they certainly didn’t invent “the finger,” which dates at least to ancient Rome and definitely symbolizes a penis. While the origins of the V-sign are more obscure, the archers probably didn’t invent it, either. In fact, the earliest known reference to the sign comes from the works of Rabelais—a French satirist of the 1500s.

“Giving the bird” was originally British theatrical slang of the early 1800s, meaning to drive a performer off the stage with goose-like hisses. It came to mean any kind of rejection or ridicule.

By the turn of the century, “bird” was also slang for various private body parts, including the penis. It was apparently US military pilots who put the terms together to call the middle finger “giving the bird” in the 1960s.

Finally, there’s no evidence that using a bow was ever called “plucking.” “Shooting,” “drawing,” “loosing” and possibly “striking” and “stretching” were the terms of the day.

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