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The V sign is a hand gesture in which the index finger and are raised and parted to make a V shape while the other fingers are clenched. It has various meanings, depending on the circumstances and how it is presented.
When displayed with the palm inward toward the signer, it can be an offensive gesture in some Commonwealth nations (similar to The finger), dating back to at least 1900. When given with the palm outward, it is to be read as a victory sign (" V for Victory"); this usage was introduced in January 1941 as part of a campaign by the Allies of World War II, and made more widely known by Winston Churchill. During the Vietnam War, in the 1960s, the " V sign" with palm outward was widely adopted by the counterculture as a Peace symbols and still used today worldwide as the " peace sign".
Where the palm of the hand is facing inward toward the signer (i.e. the back of the hand faces the observer), this is seen as insulting gesture in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.V sign as an insult:
With the palm outward toward the observer, it can mean "victory", in a setting of wartime or competition. This was first popularised in January 1941 by Victor de Laveleye, a Belgian politician in exile, who suggested it as a symbol of unity in a radio speech and the subsequent "V for Victory" campaign by the BBC. It is sometimes made using both hands with upraised arms as United States president Dwight Eisenhower and, in imitation of him, Richard Nixon, used to do. This sign came to mean "peace" or "friend", used around the world by peace and counter-culture groups; popularized in the American peace movement of the 1960s. The commonality with the symbol's use from the 1940s was its meaning the "end of war".
In American Sign Language, the number 2 is signalled with two fingers raised and the palm towards the signer, the letter V with the palm away,Staff. American Manual Alphabet Chart Center for Disability Information & Referral (CeDIR), Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at Indiana University and the ordinal second with the sign palm forward before being turned (yawing) until the palm faces backward. General finger-counting systems use either facing for the number 2.
The V shape is also used in a number of signs in many sign languages, including (in American Sign Language) "to look" (with the palm down) or "to see" (palm up). When the pointer and middle fingers are pointed at the signer's eyes then turned and the pointer finger is pointed at someone it means "I am watching you."
V-signs in motion are used in air quotes, flexing the fingers, palm out, of one or both hands.
As an example of the V sign (palm inward) as an insult, on 1 November 1990, The Sun, a British tabloid, ran an article on its front page with the headline "Up Yours, Jacques Delors" next to a hand making a V sign protruding from a Union Jack cuff. The article attracted complaints about alleged Francophobia, which the Press Council rejected after the newspaper stated that the paper reserved the right to use vulgar abuse in the interests of Britain.
On 3 April 2009, Scottish association football players Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor were banned from the Scotland national squad for showing the V sign while sitting on the bench during the game against Iceland. Both players had been drinking alcohol in their hotel bar after a defeat to The Netherlands until around 11 am the next morning, meaning that both of the players breached the SFA discipline code before the incident as well, but the attitude shown by the V sign was considered to be so rude that the SFA decided to exclude those players from the national team. Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor banned for life by Scotland, The Guardian, Friday 3 April 2009 Their club side Rangers fined both Ferguson and McGregor, and removed the club captaincy from Ferguson, as a result of the controversy. McGregor's ban was lifted by Scotland manager Craig Levein in 2010 and he returned to the Scottish national squad.
Steve McQueen gives the sign in the closing scene of the 1971 motorsport film, Le Mans. A still picture of the gesture was recorded by photographer Nigel Snowdon and has become an icon of both McQueen and the film itself.
For a time in the UK, "a Harvey (Smith)" became a way of describing the insulting version of the V sign, much as "the word of Cambronne" is used in France, or "the Pierre Trudeau salute" is used to describe the the finger in Canada. This happened because, in 1971, show-jumper Harvey Smith was disqualified for making a televised V sign to the judges after winning the British Show Jumping Derby at Hickstead. His win was reinstated two days later.Staff On this Day 15 August 1971: 'V-sign' costs rider victory "BBC The infamous gesture won him an entry in the Chambers dictionary which defined 'a Harvey Smith' as 'a V-sign with the palm inwards, signifying derision and contempt'". Accessed 23 April 2008 Harvey Smith pleaded that he was using a Victory sign, a defence also used by other figures in the public eye.Staff. The V sign, www.icons.org.uk. Accessed 23 April 2008
Sometimes overseas visitors to the countries mentioned above use the "two-fingered salute" without knowing it is offensive to the natives, for example when ordering two beers in a noisy pub, or in the case of the United States president George H. W. Bush, who, while touring Australia in 1992, attempted to give a "peace sign" to a group of farmers in Canberra—who were protesting about U.S. farm subsidies—and instead gave the insulting V sign.Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (2004). George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Progressive Press paperback edition (2004), p. 651(web link to Chapter XXV – Thyroid Storm). Tarpley & Chaitkin cite the Washington Post, 3 January 1992.
The first unambiguous, attested evidence of the use of the insulting V sign in the United Kingdom dates to 1901, when a worker outside Parkgate Ironworks in Rotherham used the gesture (captured on the film) to indicate that he did not like being filmed.Staff. The V sign, www.icons.org.uk web.archive.orgArchived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Peter Opie interviewed children in the 1950s and observed in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) that the much-older thumbing of the nose (cocking a snook) had been replaced by the V sign as the most common insulting gesture used in the playground.
Between 1975 and 1977, a group of anthropologists including Desmond Morris studied the history and spread of European gestures and found the rude version of the V-sign to be basically unknown outside the British Isles. In his Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, published in 1979, Morris discussed various possible origins of this sign but came to no definite conclusion:
In the BBC broadcast, de Laveleye said that "the occupier, by seeing this sign, always the same, infinitely repeated, would understand that he is surrounded, encircled by an immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of weakness, watching for his first failure." Within weeks chalked up Vs began appearing on walls throughout Belgium, the Netherlands and Northern France. "The V-campaign". Virtual Radiomuseum. Buoyed by this success, the BBC started the "V for Victory" campaign, for which they put in charge the assistant news editor Douglas Ritchie posing as "Colonel Britton". Ritchie suggested an audible V using its Morse code rhythm (three dots and a dash). As the rousing opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony had the same rhythm, the BBC used this as its call-sign in its foreign language programmes to occupied Europe for the rest of the war. The more musically educated also understood that it was the Fate motif "knocking on the door" of Nazi Germany.
(). The BBC also encouraged the use of the V gesture introduced by de Laveleye.
By July 1941, the emblematic use of the letter V had spread through occupied Europe. On 19 July, Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred approvingly to the V for Victory campaign in a speech, from which point he started using the V hand sign. Early on he sometimes gestured palm in (sometimes with a cigar between the fingers). Later in the war, he used palm out. After aides explained to the aristocratic Churchill what the palm in gesture meant to other classes, he made sure to use the appropriate sign. Yet the double entendre of the gesture might have contributed to its popularity, "for a simple twist of hand would have presented the dorsal side in a mocking snub to the common enemy".James Jerman, Anthony Weir (2013). Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches. London: Routledge. p. 145. Other Allied leaders used the sign as well.
The Germans could not remove all the signs, so they adopted the V Sign as a German symbol, sometimes adding laurel leaves under it, painting their own Vs on walls and vehicles and adding a massive V on the Eiffel Tower.
In 1942, Aleister Crowley, a British occultist, claimed to have invented the usage of a V-sign in February 1941 as a magical foil to the Nazi swastika. He maintained that he passed this to friends at the BBC, and to the British Naval Intelligence Division through his connections in MI5, eventually gaining the approval of Winston Churchill. Crowley noted that his 1913 publication Magick (Book 4) featured a V-sign and a swastika on the same plate.Kaczynski, Richard (2010). Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley. North Atlantic Books. p. 511.
The original poster for the 2003 film What a Girl Wants showed star Amanda Bynes giving a V sign as an American girl visiting London. In the US, the poster was altered to instead show Bynes with both arms down, to avoid giving the perception that the film was criticizing the then-recently commenced Iraq War.
Notes
Bibliography
Victory sign
Second World War: V for Victory campaign
On 14 January 1941, Victor de Laveleye, former Belgian Minister of Justice and director of the Radio Belgique on the BBC (1940–1944), suggested in a broadcast that Belgians use a V for victoire (French: "victory") and vrijheid (Dutch: "freedom") as a rallying emblem during the Second World War.
Vietnam War, victory, and peace
Protesters against the Vietnam War (and subsequent anti-war protests) and counterculture activists in the 1960s adopted the gesture as a sign of peace. Because the hippies of the day often flashed this sign (palm out) while saying "Peace", it became popularly known (through association) as "the peace sign".
As a photography pose
Japan
The V sign, primarily palm-outward, is very commonly made by Japanese people, especially younger people, when posing for informal photographs, and is known as peace sign, or more commonly simply peace. As the name reflects, this dates to the Vietnam War era and anti-war activists, though the precise origin is disputed. The V sign was known in Japan from the post-World War II Allied occupation of Japan, but did not acquire the use in photographs until later.
In Japan, it is generally believed to have been influenced by Beheiren's anti-Vietnam War activists in the late 1960s and a Konica camera advertisement in 1971. 1971's buzzwords A more colorful account of this practice claims it was influenced by the American figure skater Janet Lynn during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Hokkaidō. She fell during a free-skate period, but continued to smile even as she sat on the ice. Though she placed third in the competition, her cheerful diligence and persistence resonated with many Japanese viewers. Lynn became an overnight Gaijin tarento. A peace activist, Lynn frequently flashed the V sign when she was covered in Japanese media, and she is credited by some Japanese for having popularized its use since the 1970s in amateur photographs.
Elsewhere
In the United States, the usage of the V sign as a photography gesture is known but not widely used.
Risks
In addition to the risks due to different interpretations of the V-sign in different cultures, it has been suggested that fairly close photographs of palm-out V-signs may be a security risk, as people's fingerprints can be clearly identified, allowing misuse. At a distance of 1.5m or less, 100% of a fingerprint can be captured, and 50% at up to 3m. Criminals could copy the fingerprint to use with door-access and payment systems. It is also possible for law enforcement to identify people this way; Carl Stewart was arrested in 2021 after police identified his fingerprints in an image he shared on EncroChat. Sufficiently detailed fingerprint information could only be harvested in "very demanding" conditions; to check that a V-sign photograph is not a security risk, it could be examined at high zoom.
Specific uses
See also
(2025). 9780811878074, Chronicle Books. ISBN 9780811878074
Further reading
External links
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