Fig sign
The "fig sign" is a gesture made with the hand
and fingers curled and the thumb thrust between
the middle and index fingers,
or, rarely, the middle and ring fingers,
forming the fist so that the thumb partly pokes out.
In some areas of the world,
the gesture is considered a good luck charm,
in others it's considered an obscene gesture,
and in still others it's used in the
"I've got your nose" child's game.
This gesture is also the letter "T" in the
American Sign Language alphabet.
In International Sign,
which otherwise uses the same manual alphabet,
"T" has been modified to avoid possible offence.
In ancient Rome, this gesture was called the mano fico,
and was a fertility and good luck charm designed
to ward off evil. Although this usage has survived
in Latin America, where carved images of hands in
this gesture are used in good luck talismans,
in many other cultures, such as Indonesia,
Turkey and Russia, the sign has come to
have an insulting meaning roughly equivalent
to "screw you", based on the thumb being
seen as representing a clitoris or sexual intercourse;
this usage goes back at least 600 years,
being attested in The Divine Comedy
(Inferno, Canto XXV). In modern Russia this gesture
is used mostly by kids with the meaning
"screw you/no way". The same meaning is
expressed by adults either with the bent elbow
(rude, very emphatic, non-classy),
or with the "finger" (used mostly by city dwellers).
The "finger" made it to Russian gesture
language from Western movies. In modern Italian,
the gesture is called the mano fica,
taken to mean "fig hand",
as the Italian word for "fig" is fico (ficus in Latin).
The obscene connotations of the gesture
may partly originate from the fact that a
similar Italian word, fica,
is a slang term referring to the vulva.
This sexual connotation may date back
to ancient Roman times; some Roman amulets
combine a phallus and a mano fico gesture.
In the Indian sub-continent, this gesture
is taken as threatening symbol.
Many neopagans use this gesture as a
symbol of the mother goddess to help adherents
identify one another. In this context,
it's referred to as the "Sign of the Goddess".
Its counterpart is the corna sign.
In Turkey, this gesture is considered highly offensive.
