Bad Greeks ⟩ What did the middle finger gesture originally mean?

If you’ve ever shown the middle finger, you have something in common with the ancient Greeks.

About 2,500 years ago, mischievous Greeks began using the phallic gesture to insult, mock, and literally tease each other. While showing the middle finger today is clearly a sign of sending someone to a certain place, in classical Greek society, historians say, the middle finger was more of an overt sexual reference.

Since then, the middle finger has become a frequently used emoticon, a gesture of anger, CNN writes.

“The possessed Greeks used the erect middle finger to represent the penis,” wrote Max Nelson, who teaches courses on classical civilizations at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, in a 2017 article on the origins of the gesture.

2024-01-28 17:00:00
bad-greeks-%e2%9f%a9-what-did-the-middle-finger-gesture-originally-mean