Date:  Mon, 3 Feb 1997 18:58:19 -0500
From:  Mark Mandel <Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM>
Subject: "the bird"

My daughter inquires about the origin of
    1. the American rude gesture known as "flipping the bird", which
is not really within the domain of this list, and
    2. its name, which is.
Can anyone help?

        Mark A. Mandel : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
  Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
      Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/