An important history lesson in these trying times.

[Rainbowreflect]

History of Middle Finger

Well, now......here's something I never knew before, and now that I
know it, I feel compelled to
send it on to my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too,
will feel edified. Isn't
history more fun when you know something about it?

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating
victory over the English,
proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers.

Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned
English longbow and
therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future.

This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the
act of drawing the longbow
was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew").

Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset
and began mocking the
French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying,
See, we can still pluck yew!
"PLUCK YEW!"

Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant
cluster at the beginning has
gradually hanged to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words
often used in conjunction
with the one-finger-salute!

It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the
longbow that the symbolic
gesture is known as "giving the bird."

IT IS STILL AN APPROPRIATE SALUTE

[Rainbowreflect]

1. Shamelessly kicking my own story!

[Shell Beau]

2. It deserves the kick!

and for the story...

[BigMcLargehuge]

3. shamlessly snopesing you

http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/pluckyew.htm

[Rainbowreflect]

6. I kinda knew it was not true, but I sounded like my kind of B.S.!

[mainegreen]

4. Awesome

Ain't language great?

[tjwmason]

5. Not quite.

It's the index finger and the middle finger - English bowmen, in contrast to European, used these two fingers (Europeans used three fingers).

It was therefore a common French practice to cut off these two fingers when a bowman was captured. English archers (being grumpy beligerent sods - some things never change) would wave these fingers as an act of defiance at the Frenchies.

The act of raising the middle finger is (to my knowledge) an entirely American development (though it is crossing the Atlantic), when contrasted with the English two fingers (think of Churchill's V for victory and turn the hand through 180 degrees).

I fear that the part about pluck yew sounds entirely spurious to me; as does 'the bird'.