Quote Originally Posted by nigel View Post
[FONT="Verdana"][SIZE="4"]The English two finger V shape is an insult gesture that started in England in the fourteenth century. It was started by the Battle Of Agincourt ...
... When the English archers held up those fingers upright and apart to taunt the French before a battle they were actually saying "See! I still have them!" and the "V" sign rapidly became a very insulting gesture.
Well, well, that's something new I've learnt! Like [almost] everyone else in the UK, I'd always known that the 'V-sign' was a rudely contemptuous gesticulation ... God knows, I have used it many times myself! ... an unspoken way of conveying the message: "Stuff YOU, mate!". Being of a certain age, I was equally aware that it had been famously attributed to much-publicised photographs of a cigar-smoking Winston Churchill holding up the third and fourth fingers of his (I think) right hand in a V-shaped formation to denote 'Victory in Europe' towards the end of the last World War.

But apart from THAT ... ??? Anyway, thanks Nigel for your informative post.