someone holding up the middle finger drawing

Wilton acknowledges earlier in the book that the story of Agincourt and the two-finger salute is older than the internet. In actual fact, the real episode of the show did not feature anything about “plucking yew” and only said that another gesture (presumably the two-finger salute) might have originated at Agincourt. “Over the years … Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative ‘f’, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter”. “ … the middle finger, without which it is impossible to draw the renowned English longbow … Thus, when the victorious English waved their middle fingers at the defeated French, they said, ‘See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!’ Specifically, an inaccurate transcript of an NPR (National Public Radio, a US program) show called ‘Car Talk’ featured a story that answered the question of which body part the English archers waved at the French at Agincourt. It is doubtful that whoever came up with this howler meant for it to be taken seriously”.Īnd yet, it has spread, he says, thanks to the internet. “During the Hundred Years’ War the French would cut the middle finger off the hands of captured English archers so that they could no longer draw the strings of their deadly yew longbows (the type of wood from which they were made.) Because of this, English archers would taunt the French by raising their middle fingers and exclaiming that they could still ‘pluck yew’, hence the four-letter word (f**k.)”įunny, though as Wilton goes on to explain, “ … this is obviously (just) a joke, a pun. In his book ‘Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends’, David Wilton explores the origins of the V-sign in a section entitled ‘F**k’: For an audio version of this article, click on the video above

Someone holding up the middle finger drawing