When and how did biting your thumb at someone become an insult?
I know there are references to it in Shakespeare, but I think that’s where your title came from, so you probably already knew that.
I do bite my thumb, sir.
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
Do you quarrel, sir?
I do quarrel. And I have an answer! The “bite my thumb at you” bit is a reference to giving someone a “fico” - a Spanish or Itallian fig. Now, in classical literature, to “give someone an Italian (or Spanish) fig” is essentially a means of poisoning that person - the fig is laced (probably with arsenic). So, when in Romeo and Juliet, someone is told “I bite my thumb at thee”, the biter is essentially making a fico with his thumb, and biting it. Thus wishing death, essentially on the other person.
Incidentally, the fico is also a bit of sexual imagery…
If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.
I met Olivia Hussey’s sister once… does that apply?
One of the mothers on the old sitcom The Mothers-In-Law used to do the thumb-bite thing all the time, I think she was Italian. (Eve Arden or Kaye Ballard, I forget which one was which.)
Speaking of Olivia Hussey, in that version of R&J didn’t biting the thumb also include leaving the thumb’s tip dripping with saliva in a fellatio image?
No better.
Yes, better, sir.
You lie.
Draw, if you be men.
Its entirely plausible, and probably a result of the sexual imagery interpretation of the fico. I really hope I don’t have to spell that one out; my poor office mate was bright red as we discussed that one!
[scouse] Calm down! Calm down! [/scouse]
Sirrah! I do indeed bite my thumb at your uncouth self.
[waynetta]Stop suckin that bleedin fumb Frogmella ya mingin cah … it ain’t ladylike[/waynetta]
Julie