The one finger salute or the act of giving someone “The Finger” has its most popular origin in the story of the hundred year’s war between the English and the French. The story goes that the English possessed the newly invented longbow which requires that you use your middle finger to pull the sting and thus fire the arrow. The French in some accounts upon capturing the British archers cut off the middle finger so that they could never fire an arrow from a bow again.
Other stories state that the French merely vowed to cut off the middle finger of every archer that they would capture. At any rate the story goes on to say that after the British won the battle and the French were in retreat they touted them by raising their “Bow Finger” in defiance in effect giving them the finger.
Today the one fingered salute which is considered an obscene gesture is an exclamation of defiance or the symbolic act of saying “Up Yours”
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