October 14th, 2005

Today, Fee B2 shared with us a story about bird flipping. While shopping for dry biscuits at Diamond Creek supermarket this week, she watched as a young shelf-stacking hoodlum rolled past at the top of aisle 8, took one look in her direction, and flipped an emphatic bird straight at her. It took a second for Fee to turn around and see that the hoodlum bird-flipper had his sights set on a hoodlum bird-flippee who was stacking shelves further down the aisle. Fee was disappointed it wasn’t meant for her. A middle finger extended in greeting made her think of her salad days in Epping.

We then received several calls from listeners who were unsure of what the expression “flipping the bird” meant (clearly listeners who grew up outside Epping and Greater Epping). We did our best to explain, and other helpful callers even sorted us out with some gestural etymology. Apparently the French would cut off the middle fingers (or middle and index fingers) of English archers in battle, and so if the English longbowers had a successful attack they’d extend a finger or two, literally adding insult to injury. As the centuries unfolded, adjunct phrases such as ‘sit on this’ and ‘up yours’ and ‘why don’t you shove this up your arse’ evolved to give flipping the bird the sort of nuance it has today. †

But really, explaining bird flipping is no substitute for actually watching a flipped bird in full flight.

† Any students doing assignments on how bird-flipping evolved should be warned that this whole page is the worst sort of internet hearsay. Refer all queries to Ian Syson at http://sleepybrain.net/nowhere/. Ian is also working from hearsay, but his is one ear closer to the source than me.