All This Is That: the finger

By Mona Goldwater & Pablo Fanque

This article first appeared on All This Is That in 2006. According to Google, it is one of our "greatest hits." Every few weeks, we try to print a blast from the past. Having just discovered the great photo of Josef Stalin thumbing his noce at his bodyguard, we decided to update the article and include him.

The finger, the wanker, the cuckoo sign, the shocker, rock horns, the shaka sign, and more

by Jack Brummet, Social Mores Editor

Click to enlarge. Vice-President Rockefeller gives the finger to a
group of hecklers.

The finger - (e.g., "giving" someone the finger), is an extremely popular hand gesture made by extending the middle finger of the hand while bending the other fingers at the second knuckle. It's can perhaps be a softer way of saying "f*** you". In other countries, the OK sign means the same thing. President Bush can be seen in the montage below, performing the gesture. The finger can be extremely hostile, or, among friends, it can just be another way of saying "yeah, right."

This variant was sent by Mark Yeend, who called it the "fake flip off"
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The Bent Elbow is a theatrical, Italian version of The Finger, and is sometimes combined with the finger. In Italian it is known as the gesto dell'ombrello, meaning "the umbrella gesture." It is typically used two ways: 1) to answer "no way!" in an extremely emphatic (and quite vulgar) way, and 2) after a triumph against some unfair enemy, with a sense of revenge.
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The Sssshhh sign... (Thanks to Mark Yeend)
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The Fig sign - The sign of the fig is a highly insulting hand gesture used, so far as I know, only in Italy (perhaps in other places, too.) It is made by making a fist, with the thumb inserted between the index and middle fingers. The gesture allegedly represents the female genitalia, although I really don't see the resemblance. . .
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The cuckoo sign. A hard sign to illustrate, because it is active. It is used to indicate a person in the room is unbalanced. Kids sometimes use it in a sort of rebus: You (pointing toward a person) + drive (gesture showing two hands moving a steering wheel) + me (point toward self) + crazy (the cuckoo sign). Normally, the gesture is made by pointing your index finger at your head and tracing circles with the finger. It's a little bit old school, and you don't see it much anymore.
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The beckoning sign. Another active sign. The "come here" gesture. You hold your fist clenched. The finger moves repeatedly towards the gesturer (in a hook) as to draw something closer. It is normally seen as condescending because it is a command. It is sometimes performed with the four fingers, or the entire hand.
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The blah blah sign /the yak yak gesture. The fingers are kept straight and together in a horizontal fashion while the thumb is held out straight. The fingers and thumb then snap together repeatedly to suggest a mouth talking. Sort of like a duck's mouth. It is used to indicate that a person is pointlessly flapping their gums.
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The time out sign. Used in sporting events, and sometimes in normal conversation. In conversation it can mean "let's take a break," "please quite talking about this," or "stop arguing."
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The benediction sign. Used by pontiffs and emperors (and, I think, Priests) as a blessing sign. Click on this link to see the Benediction gesture, on a coin of Emperor Constantine.
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Crossed fingers - Crossing the first two fingers is a good luck sign around the world, mainly, however, in Christian countries. One theory posits that when Christianity was illegal, the crossing of fingers was a secret sign for Christians to recognise each other. The gesture sometimes is used to negate something spoken (if you tell someone "you look fabulous" with your fingers crossed, you were probably not telling the truth).
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Rock horns/hook 'em horns/devil horns
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The OK sign
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The shaka sign is the "hang loose" gesture. It is similar to American Sign Language letter "Y", where a fist is also made with only the thumb and pinky extended. The sign is often followed by waving as a greeting or acknowledgement--"thanks for letting me on the freeway!"
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Call me. These days it might be a gesture you make to someone across the floor of a nightclub.
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Thumbs up
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Thumbs down - We think--from watching all those Cecil B. DeMille style sand and sandals epics--that the thumbs down gesture means "kill him!" In fact, scholars just aren't sure whether the gesture means kill him, or spare him...thumbs down meaning, "no, spare him," and thumbs up meaning "yes, kill him!"
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The stop gesture - In the U.S., this is the stop gesture. In Greece, however, it has a slightly different meaning: "I rub feces in your face!"
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The Vulcan salute ("live long and prosper").

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The wanker sign. . .I probably don't need to explain this one.
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Biting the thumb at anyone was once a mark of contempt, usually designed to provoke a quarrel. . .it also means to defy. ``Do you bite your thumb at us?'' -Wm. Shakespeare
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The choke sign - The gesture refers to someone or something "choking" in the sense of failing under pressure. It generally refers to someone involved in an athletic event, although I have heard it used in the business world too.
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The cutthroat sign is usually used for one of two things: to warn someone to quit talking or suffer the consequences. Or to say "He's a dead man."
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The Bang Bang, or, gun sign
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nose thumbing/queen anne's fan - This is a mild mocking gesture. Here are some prime examples from both Karl V. Rove and Josef Stalin. . .

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The shocker - A sexually-charged, gesture in which the ring finger and thumb are curled down, with the other fingers extended. The index and middle fingers touch, and the back of the hand faces away from the gesturer. The gesture refers to the act of inserting the index and middle fingers into a vagina and the pinky finger into the nearby exit aperture (the "shocker"). The shocker is sometimes considered vulgar. Did I just write sometimes? There are dozens of rhyming phrases for this gesture, like "Two in the pink, one in the stink."
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The gag me sign - I'm not sure, but the gesture may have originated with "Valley Speak," the idiom of the kids of the San Fernando Valley. I do remember the Valley Speak phrase "gag me with a spoon." I'm sure this gesture was around along before the 80s.

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Victory Sign - V for victory. A lot of us remember this as being one of Sir Winston Churchill's signatures. In this photo, President Richard Nixon used the sign at the moment of his greatest disgrace. . .he was leaving Washington D.C., having resigned the Presidency. Moments after this 'chopper took off, Gerald Ford became President and Nixon landed later that day in California, as a civilian.

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