what does the middle finger mean 626 years ago?
100021
It is older than than 626 year. It comes from when archers were captured in battle they were typically very young small boys that could not wield a sword well. Most of the time they were spared but their middle finger were cut off to make them ineffective as an archer. So when some one was captured from the other side the archers would show there  fingers in devience as though saying ha ha I am still killing with this finger.
1055198
left hand finger next to pinkie
738005
"This gesture originates from the custom of making a wish upon the cross. It was believed that the cross was a symbol of unity and that benign spirits dwelt at its intersecting point -- to wish on a cross was a figurative way of securing the wish at the intersection until it came true.\n\nThis custom dates back to pre-Christian times and, in many early European cultures, two people were required to use their index fingers to form the sign, one to make the wish and the other to support it. Over the years, the custom was modified so one person could make a wish on his/her own."
683436
I think that somebody started saying it that way and it caught on.  I agree with you that it seems arbitrary.  It might also be that this changes over time.  Maybe a couple of decades from now, people will be saying "twenty o six".
846793
Its about 2,740 years
578871
Middle fingers unite!
546239
Why would 2006 have any more meaning than 1906? or 1806, 1706....
32664
Hi, there are several meanings for this phrase, the most used version relates to one's leading position in a discussion or meeting, ie: because you got a degree in greek history you would have the "dominant hand" in any discussion about greek history with others that did not study it.\nthe other meaning relates to the hand you use the most in doing various tasks, such as the hand you write with or the hand you point with are considered your "dominant hand".\nAnd lastly it was the name of a rock group I started in the late 70's. ;-)
468510
Ah, yes, Dane Cook asked that question as part of a joke* (* "Did he try other things too? Did he just go, "You know what, suck my back! Just suck it!"). Who in general invented the finger? The Italians. Who specifically? I do not know. But I can tell you this: It must have been an awkward moment for the guy to just whip out his middle finger as a show of anger and frustration at another.\nLike Dane Cook says, the guy probably went, "You know what, you just make so, er! (holds up fist with middle finger pointed up) Just look at my finger and you'll know man!"
497266
The story -- often repeated in print & orally -- is this:\n>\n>    The phrase "Rule of Thumb" comes from English Common\n>    Law which deemed it a man's right to beat his wife\n>    with a stick no thicker than the diameter of his thumb.\n>\n>For the last 6 or 7 years I have been looking for **RELIABLE** confirmation\n>of this, and/or the earliest legal reference to this "Common Law."  I have\n>found MANY sources that *claim* that it stems from English Common Law, but\n>searches of legal decisions (by friends who are lawyers or legal researchers)\n>and/or of Blackstone, etc. never turn up any actual reference to a legal\n>decision citing this "common law" or even any reference to it.  I'm beginning\n>to wonder if this is another Academic Myth.\n>\n>Please reply privately, and I will summarize for the list if there is interest.\n>------------------------\n>Ruth Ginzberg <rginzberg  AT  eagle.wesleyan.edu>\n>Philosophy Department;Wesleyan University;USA\n \nThe only place I know to look for answers to such questions is the OED.\nIt won't state straight out that such-and-such is the case, but if you know\nhow to read the OED you can often figure out likelihoods.\n \nThe whip thing is a bit of modern folklore.  It is typical of such back-formed\nexplanations well-known to linguists and folklorists.  (The folk etymology\nof 'asparagus' as 'sparrow-grass' and the plague interpretation of 'Ring\nAround the Rosie' are two others.)\n \nThe real explanation of 'rule-of-thumb' is that is derives from wood\nworkers (or other constructors) who knew their trade so well they rarely\nor never fell back on the use of such things as rulers.  Instead they'd\nmeasure things by, for example, the length of their thumb;  they measured,\nnot by a rule(r) of wood, but by rule of thumb.  The term was already in\nmetaphorical use by the late 17th century.\n \nI'd like to see the accumulated references to the wife-beating explanation.\n I wonder for instance just when that back-formed 'origin' came into being?
609627
It DOES originate from the item a man would have been allowed to beat his wife with. If the item was smaller than his thumb, then he could beat her with it, but anything bigger than his thumb was not allowed!
43373
The year of 46 B.C.E (the only one I could find via google).
248992
it's not the bad finger, it's the mind that uses it.  Not all countries think that is the bad finger.  In the middle east it's the left hand and the bottom of the foot
1036937
The expression rule of thumb has been recorded since 1692 and probably wasn’t new then. It meant then what it means now—some method or procedure that comes from practice or experience, without any formal basis. Some have tried to link it with brewing; in the days before thermometers, brewers were said to have gauged the temperature of the fermenting liquor with the thumb (just as mothers for generations have tested the temperature of the baby’s bath water with their elbows). This seems unlikely, as the thumb is not that sensitive and the range of temperatures for fermentation between too cool and too warm is quite small.\n\nIt is much more likely that it comes from the ancient use of bits of the body to make measurements. There were once many of these: the unit of the foot comes from pacing out dimensions; the distance from the tip of the nose to the outstretched fingers is about one yard; horse heights are still measured in hands (the width of the palm and closed thumb, now fixed at four inches); and so on. There was an old tailors’ axiom that “twice around the thumb is once around the wrist”, which turns up in Gulliver’s Travels. It’s most likely that the saying comes from the length of the first joint of the thumb, which is about an inch (I remember once seeing a carpenter actually make a rough measurement this way). So the phrase rule of thumb uses the word rule in the sense of ruler, not regulation, and directly refers to this method of measurement.\n\nSo where does beating your wife come in? Sharon Fenick wrote an article about its origins in the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban in 1996. She found that for more than two centuries there have been references in legal works to the idea that a man may legally beat his wife, provided that he used a stick no thicker than his thumb; but the references were always to what some people believed, not to established legal principle. The British common law had long held that it was legal for a man to chastise his wife in moderation, as one might a servant or child, but Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England in 1765 that this principle was by then in decline. So far as I can discover nothing was ever laid down about how such discipline should be applied.\n\nMs Fenick traced the idea back to a pronouncement that was supposed to have been made in 1782 by a British judge, Sir Francis Buller; this led to a fiercely satirical cartoon by James Gillray that was published on 27 November that year, in which Buller was caricatured as Judge Thumb. (Buller was a brilliant lawyer, the youngest man ever to be appointed a judge in Britain, at 32, but he was widely considered hasty and prejudiced in his opinions.)\n\nIt might be that he never made the statement that rendered him so notorious. Edward Foss, in his Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England of 1864 says that to Buller “is attributed the obnoxious and ungentlemanly dictum that a husband may beat his wife, so that the stick with which he administers the castigation is not thicker than his thumb”, but says he can’t find any evidence Buller said it. But the Dictionary of National Biography and other standard works say firmly he did, as did contemporary biographies.\n\nHowever, it was only in 1976, so far as I can discover, that the traditional phrase rule of thumb became directly associated with this spurious legal maxim, through a bit of wordplay in a report that was misunderstood by readers.\n\nIt is extraordinary that we can so accurately pinpoint the moment at which this folk belief came into being. And how astonishing, too, that it should have survived more than two centuries to become part of the folklore of modern times.
984785
The middle finger? Like the one you flip people off with? That doesn't mean anything. So don't worry about it!
961
It's not that finger, it's the hand gesture.  And it's considered an obscene gesture because it is meant to represent male genitalia.  Nor is it universal.  Other countries use hand gestures that we consider innocuous as vulgar gestures.
1143655
It could be that they are giving a number to mean a long amount of time. It could be that a year was measured differently in his time. It could be a translation issue. Maybe the world they are translating is supposed to be month and not year. If so, if he lived 950 years, it would actually be just over 79 years.