The History of Flipping the Bird

The reference to flipping the bird might be older than you thought. In the 1600s if you were an actor on stage and the audience didn't like you they might hiss right a? This was known as giving someone the goose because that's what geese do when they're angry. Later on it became known as giving people the bird or giving someone the big bird so there's a link there between between doing something disrespectful and tying it to birds. It's possible at some point the gesture took the name over from the hissing but we don't see flipping the but we see the bird kind of earlier in this story.