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Peace Symbol – V-Sign
By peace | May 10, 2006
The V sign is a hand gesture in which the first and second fingers are raised and parted, whilst the remaining fingers are clenched. Originally considered a “Victory” sign (for V as in victory), it can also carry connotations of “Peace” and “De
fiance.”
In the UK, if the hand is held out with the palm towards the person performing the gesture (a peace sign reversed), this is considered to be insulting, similar in severity to the insulting gesture commonly known as “the finger’.
In United States culture, it is now probably most frequently seen as a gesture of peace, a connotation that became popular during the peace movement of the 1960s.
In Asia, the gesture is often used by persons posing in photographs, with no particular meaning. This usage of the gesture has become widely seen outside Asia through its use in Japanese anime and manga. (Some have suggested that it is used by the Japanese to represent “peace” in the aftermath of nuclear bombing.)
It has long been told that the famous “two-fingers salute” and/or “V sign” derives from the gestures of Welsh archers who used the English longbow, fighting alongside the English at the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years War. The myth claims that the French cut off two fingers on the right hand of captured archers and that the gesture was a sign of defiance by those who were not mutilated.
World peace will never be stable until enough of us find inner peace
to stabilize it.
This may have some basis in fact – Jean Froissart (circa 1337-circa 1404) was a historian as the author of The Chronicle, a primary document that is essential to an understanding of Europe in the fourteenth century and to the twists and turns taken by the Hundred Years’ War. The story of the English waving their fingers at the French is told in the first person account by Froissart, however the description is not of an incident at the Battle of Agincourt, but rather at the siege of a castle in another incident during the Hundred Years War. Also, Froissart is known to have died before the Battle of Agincourt. Like many social memes it is difficult to ever know for sure where they began but this story has become a part of western myth.
Read MoreThe Story of Peace Sign
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