4 Strange Origins of Common Hand Gestures
Unless you’ve eaten a strange mushroom or dropped a priceless vase, you’re probably not thinking too hard about your hands right now. And yet they’re some of our most expressive features, used to congratulate friends and mock foes. So don’t we owe it to ourselves — and our friends and foes — to learn why we make the hand gestures we do? Obviously, the answer is yes, because those gesture origins are fascinating.
The Middle Finger Goes All The Way Back To Rome, Means Penis
Extending your middle finger at somebody is a widely accepted way to let people know you don’t like them, and also that you’re apparently willing to get punched in the face. People usually take offense, despite the vast majority of us not really knowing what it actually means, much less from where it originates.
Well, allow me to clear that confusion up right goddamn now. It means penis. As in, every time you extend your middle finger, you’re basically saying, “Hello there! Here is my metaphorical member. May it represent my general displeasure towards you and all that you stand for.”
The first known person to connect the middle finger to the dong (again, metaphorically) was a playwright named Aristophanes. In his 423 B.C.E. play, The Clouds, one of the characters makes an extremely weird joke about how, as a child, they kept time by tapping on their penis instead of their middle finger which ... I mean, those can’t be the two best ways to serve as a clock when it’s time to pull the casserole out of the oven, right?
Regardless, the phallus finger pops up again about a hundred years later when a guy named Demosthenes is recorded flipping the bird at some people he didn’t like. Also, side note: Ancient Greeks often associated birds with penises, but that doesn’t appear to be the origin of “flipping the bird.” It’s just a fun thing they did, I guess. By the time we get to the Roman Emperor Caligula — a notoriously crazy dude — there are reports of him forcing senators to kiss his middle finger which ... dude, come on.
It appears the practice sort of fell out of favor in the following years as the Catholic Church rose to power and presumably wasn’t super thrilled about everybody metaphorically flashing their naughty bits at each other. The next modern recorded instance of the expression didn’t arrive until 1886 when a pitcher for the hilariously named Boston Beaneaters (himself hilariously nicknamed “Old Hoss”) flashed his middle finger in a team photo and also on a baseball card that recently sold for a whopping $9,600.
That’s why us rogues are always flipping the bird for our professional headshots. You just never know, man.
Bunny Ears (And Metal Horns) Reference Your Wife Hooking Up With Other Dudes
There comes a time in every child’s life when the height of comedy becomes giving your friend bunny ears right before a photograph is taken. It’s funny because your friend isn’t actually a bunny rabbit, and yet in the picture, they appear to have bunny rabbit ears. This is, in fact, the height of comedy.
But what’s less funny is that historically putting two fingers up behind a person’s head meant less “haha you are a small woodland creature” and more “haha your wife is being banged by another dude.” Long before bunnies ever entered the picture, this type of hand gesture was known as the “Cuckold’s Horns.” It was also occasionally called “Ass Ears” by which they meant donkey, but by which I mean you really need a Q-Tip.
How did this all come about? Well, the horn part seems to be an allusion to deer, and the fact that if another deer kicks another one's ass, the loser has to give up whatever lady deer they’ve been sleeping with and let the new deer do their thing. As for the word cuckold itself, the BBC points out it comes from cuckoo birds and how some species will crap out their eggs in other birds' nests so that they’ll raise them. Much like a ... cheating wife? I'm not sure I understand the metaphor, but apparently it was important to everybody at the time to have a hand motion that mocked people whose wives cheated.
That seems unnecessary, but people all through the Middle Ages started throwing up horns to insult each other. It even pops up in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The gesture also appears in tons of paintings from that time period.
Ignore the woman who forgot the top part of her dress.
And even though many children have co-opted the gesture for non-cuckholding purposes, it’s still seen as offensive to many Westerners. Take, for example, when Italian prime Minister Silvio Belusconi threw horns at Spanish foreign minister Josep Pique and was forced to claim that he was “just kidding” lest somebody start throwing fists.
Time.com
Or tanks.
The Founder Of “Hang Loose” Didn’t Have Any Other Fingers To Choose From
The “hang loose,” or shaka sign, is a hand gesture with no clear definition other than sort of a general “it’s all good, man” vibe. If you’re a surfer, it can also be a quick way to tell people you don’t have a job.
There are admittedly a few different possible origins for the shaka, but Hawaii itself believes it originated from this dude: Hamana Kalili. Kalili was well loved in his community, but it’s actually kind of a sad story how his signature wave came to be adopted by the world at large. Although it depends on whom you ask, it seems most likely that while working at a sugar mill, Kalili lost three of his fingers in a terrible accident. So when he held up his hand with finger and thumb outstretched, it sort of automatically made the shaka because, well, that’s all he was working with.
After the accident, he was assigned to security detail for the sugar cane railroad. As part of the job, he’d often wave that either the train was loaded up and “all clear” to leave, or he just spent a lot of time waving at local kids to get the hell off the train lest they lose a few body parts of their own — whether by accident or by design for stealing sugar cane.
Regardless of what he was specifically waving at, many kids adopted the unusual hand shape amongst themselves as a, uh, shorthand for “go for it.” Hey, that’s actually kind of messed up, right? They saw a guy with a bunch of missing fingers waving and developed a signal mimicking his injury that also simultaneously sort of mocked the man’s job? Children kind of suck sometimes, huh?
Kalili also reportedly led a local church congregation in music while frequently using the gesture which, again, wasn’t exactly by choice, right? And eventually, the shaka reached wider recognition when Honolulu mayor Frank Fasi began using the shaka in political advertisements. I’m actually a little shocked that the sign became adopted by surfers after it “sold out” to politicians, but I guess that’s the whole thing about Haiwaiians. They’re pretty chill.
And the story does have a happy ending in the sense that they eventually erected a statue of Kalili in 2015.
Polynesia.com
Horribly mangled digits and all.
High-Fives Can Be Traced Back To The First More-Or-Less Openly Gay Athlete
In many ways, high-fiving feels like the most natural thing in the world. What better way to tell somebody you think they’re great, but without the whole emotionally confusing effort of saying anything or wrapping your arms entirely around their body? Just slap their hand with your hand! After all, the “low-five” seems to have been a part of African-American culture since probably World War II, which could have been a simple reinvention of the handshake. The “high-five,” by contrast, is way more involved and exciting because it’s ... well, higher.
As with all things, somebody had to do it first. And that first somebody, quite possibly, is Glenn Burke.
According to ESPN on what must have been the very slow sports news day of Oct. 2, 1977, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Dusty Baker smashed a home run against the Astros. As he came into home plate, his teammate Glenn Burke stood there with his back arched and his hand high in the air looking for all the world like a goober. Unsure what to do, Baker leapt up and slapped Burke’s meaty palm. A short time later, Burke himself went up to bat and immediately also hit a home run, causing Baker to run out and high-five him — solidifying it as a “thing” that we still do to this day.
ESPN
Like how everybody will still be hitting the gritty in 50 years.
Now that’s a fun origin in and of itself, but that’s not the only history Burke made. After he retired in 1980, Burke became the first major league player to come out as gay. He’d hidden it while he played, but people still "suspected.” So much so, in fact, that Dodgers executives offered Burke $75,000 to get married, which in 1970s money could probably have gotten you a whole separate house for your wife to throw horns at whoever. I’m just saying I’m sure some arrangement could’ve been made.
Of course, Burke refused and — along with failing to copyright the high five — subsequently missed out on a lot of money. All because he had integrity? Dude. But he did, and made the right call. And now I’m going to go high-five someone just to celebrate this badass.
Jordan runs his own YouTube channel AND his own Twitter.
