Two Fingered Salute

[Bonzo 2000]

From wartime film footage, good old Winston Churchill and his buddies are often seen giving the victory V sign, in both directions - with the palm of the hand facing forwards and backwards.  Over time, the same gesture with the palm facing forwards has continued to be a positive sign, for victory or peace as shown by the hippies of the 60's.  At what point did the gesture with palm facing backwards become offensive.  It now appears odd seeing Mr Churchill aparantly giving an Oasis-style "up yours" to the crowds in the old flms.  When and why did this change?

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a980904.html and scroll down to the second part of the page, where it says something like: "And now for the truth". There, you will see that raised-finger gestures are of very ancient origin and have almost certainly nothing whatever to do with English archers at Agincourt taking the mickey out of the French! The latter is the 'story' usually given in explanation and it forms the first part of the web-page.

[jno]

Quizmonster is right (of course) but this doesn't quite answer the question, which is about two-fingered salutes. These are uncommon in America, where one finger (as per the Romans) is usually plenty - the hippies's peace sign was an exception. The two-fingered sign seems to be British and to date back quite a while, but does anyone know if Churchill deliberately took it over, or reversed it, or what?

[Octavius]

Although it may be true, it is a fact that during the Hundred Years War, captured English archers had the first two fingers of their right hand cut off so that they couldn't take part in future battles. As a defiant riposte, after felling a French soldier with an arrow, an archer would raise his two fingers, just to show that he was still in the game. The battle where this first happened was likely to have been Cr�cy in 1346.

Its what the BBC says, so it must be true!

It may be a myth, but its a good'un.

[Marsh]

My OED has the early 1940's as the first appearance in print of the term V-sign.  Even allowing for a greater modesty in what was put into print in those days, it seems to me unlikely that the term (and presumably therefore the sign itself) would be an awful lot older than that. 

I had always assumed that Churchill had turned round the existing rude sign as an attention-getting device.  The innocent would take it at face value and the not-so-innocent would enjoy the joke.  A good gimmick is worth an awful lot of votes.

[Quizmonster]

I myself know nothing whatever about archery, but I recall at some distant point in the past discussing the Agincourt myth with someone who was an archer. He assured me that English archers almost invariably use three fingers to draw the bow. This http://www.answers.com/topic/archery web-page would seem to agree. I'm at a loss, therefore, to understand why the French would not have gone the whole hog.

Given that raised fingers in one format or another have been offensive since ancient times, the question: "At what point did the gesture with palm facing backwards become offensive?" can be answered only by saying: "We've got no idea." The gesture clearly predates the word 'V-sign' to describe it, but by how long?..weeks?..decades?..centuries?..millennia?