It has been almost 25 years since former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau delivered his now infamous “Western salute” to a group of protestors at the train station in Salmon Arm, B.C. His defiant, repeated, middle-finger gesture was a keen reflection of the Liberal government’s apparent disdain for Western Canada and a succinct comment on Canadian politics of the late 1970s. By “flipping the bird” or “giving the finger,” the brazen Mr. Trudeau adopted an ancient expletive making him — one if not the only— Canadian prime minister to publicly demonstrate his appreciation for the vernacular.

For those of us less culturally aware of the significance of the epitome of all embodied slurs — in the Western world at least — it is the unspoken gesture of the word fuck, and more appropriately the expletive “fuck off.” Now, who claimed that Canadians were overly polite?

The king has no consent

Fuck is a dirty copulatory swear word that has never lost its taboo despite being in common use for over 500 years. The claim that fuck originates from the acronym, “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” or “Fornication Under Consent of the King” is considered etymologically incorrect given that words adopted from acronyms are a post 19th-century phenomenon.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first cited reference of the word fuck, in the form fukkit, back to 1503. The word fuck is also considered by some to predate the 1500s. The pseudo-Latin term fuccant is found in a 15th-century poem entitled Flen flyys. The word fuccant was written in a form of cipher to disguise it in the passage, “Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli.” Translated it reads: “They [the monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].” Undoubtedly blasphemous — even now — it makes sense that the word was used in a covert form. The earliest appearance of the current spelling was in 1535. Poet and dramatist Sir David Lyndsay used the modern version of the expletive in Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis — a morality play that blended secular and sacred drama with satirical representation.

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang suggests a different origin of the word fuck. It cites the Middle Dutch fokken “to thrust, copulate with,” the Norwegian term for copulation, fukka, and the Swedish dialect focka meaning, “to strike, push, copulate,” with fock being the Swedish word for penis. Both French and Italian have similar words: foutre and fottere that are derived from the Latin word futuere.

Let the bird fly

The raised middle finger can be traced back more than two and a half millennia to ancient Greece, where the playwright Aristophanes made a crude joke of mixing up the middle finger and the penis. The gesture became a phallic put-down as it was thought to belittle endowment — similar to the contemporary act of raising the little finger to silently make a derogatory comment about a man’s penis size.

How then did the king of cussing become associated with the ancient practice of raising the middle finger?

Booked for fuck

From a literary perspective, the word fuck has had its share of heated courtroom debate, the most notable being the 1960 legal wrangle over the publication of the unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Penguin provoked the trial by sending 12 copies to the public prosecutor. The resulting publicity over learned professors discussing under oath the admissibility of the term fuck (plus some of the book’s other juicy morsels) ensured the novel’s overnight success.

The stigma associated with the word fuck is so pervasive that not until 1965 did fuck appear in a single English dictionary. In 1948, the publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Norman Mailer to substitute the word “fug” instead of his original choice of the more powerful expletive. Dorothy Parker — American socialite and author best known for her delightful remark, “You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.” — commented upon meeting Mailer, “So you’re the man who can’t spell fuck.”

Two not one finger salutes

Raising the hand to a cap’s visor while the middle and index fingers extend and touch each other, with the ring and little fingers bent and touched by the thumb, performs the Polish military salute — similar in fashion to the Cub Scout’s salute. Of course the origin of all military salutes that raise a hand to the head or cap is the act of lifting an open — i.e. an unarmed hand — to prove one is not in a combative mode.

The 17th-century Russian tsar’s viceroy to Poland, Grand Duke Constantine, reportedly said that “Poles salute him with two fingers because in the other three they are holding a stone ready to throw at him.” At the time Poland was one of a few constitutional monarchies in Europe, with the tsar of Russia as the Polish king — a sore point among Poles seeking to retain a measure of political independence.

However, the origins of the Polish two-finger salute is lost in legend and attributed to an incident where a soldier saluted his superior with a wounded hand — from which his ring and little fingers had been blown off.

The Polish military salute, as distinguished as it may be, was the source of much contention during World War II. The British association with two raised fingers — the index and middle fingers — is as powerful as a lofted single middle finger. Insecure British officers thought that exiled Polish soldiers were mocking them with the two-finger salute.

Up your bum with devil horns?

In the British Isles, the V sign, where the palm faces inward with the index and middle fingers raised and spread to resemble a V, can be traced back to the 16th-century, presumably as a variant of the shaming practice of “wearing the horns of a cuckold.” Cuckold refers to a man with an unfaithful wife. The phrase and gesture, often associated with devil’s horns, remarks on the unsubstantiated practice where a village community would gather to collectively humiliate a man whose wife had given birth to a child recognised as other than his own. It is thought that the hapless husband was forced to wear antlers as a symbol of his wife’s infidelity and his inability to stop her.

A possible contemporised profane association of the British “finger(s)” is a subversion of the famously defiant Churchillian Second World War V-sign — V for victory, where the palm faces outward. The V-sign reversed in the inward-palm gesture, or fingers together, often accompanied with an upward motion of the hand, is currently associated with such eloquence as “up your bum,” “piss off,” or the stronger sentiment of “Fuck you!” It is also plausible that the V for victory was in turn appropriated as the commonly known “peace sign” popularized by the hippie movement in the 1960s. The peace sign is also considered as a gesture of benediction among Satanists.

Bow to the pressure

Another popular interpretation of the British V-sign is attributed to the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, in which the English longbow archers proved to be decisive in England’s victory. The longbowmen were so adept at decimating the enemy’s ranks that captured English archers supposedly had their index and middle fingers amputated to prevent them ever taking up their bows again. On the battlefield, English archers responded to this custom by offering the French a jeering two-finger salute before employing their bow fingers to a more deadly effect.

Step-by-step

Even though the origins of the marriage of the word fuck and “flipping the bird” may be shrouded in the mist of history, it remains as a common and powerful form of sign language when voicing one’s displeasure.

The important issue at hand is to ensure that regardless of the “bird’s” history, it needs to be delivered properly for maximum effect. Take note of these simple steps:

1. Extend either arm, or both, depending on your level of vehemence, at about a 90 degree angle perpendicular to the body.

2. Bend your arm at the elbow and position it parallel to the body.

3. Make a fist.

4. Raise only your middle finger.

5. The length of time you maintain your “bird” may vary depending on the situation.

It should be noted that a slight variation of the “finger” can be achieved with practice. After the above step two, bend your fingers as if you where gripping a ledge, now follow with step four. The result is a rather pleasing framing of the antiquated gesture.

However, be warned, if you feel the compulsion to “flip the bird,” just remember Sir Issac Newton’s third law of physics — every action has an equal and opposite reaction, or worse as the case may be.