Make a kind of empty tube from your thumb and your fingers of your right hand, with your index finger and thumb making a circle and all the other fingers curved under your index finger, like a fist with a gap in the middle. This is about the most aggressive/ offensive gesture in English, meaning basically “f*ck you”, often as a replacement for actually hitting someone.

Hold up your right fist with the back of your hand facing the other person and raise just your middle finger. Middle finger/ Giving someone the finger (offensive gesture) Having said all that, the V sign is a particularly annoying gesture, even when done accidently, so visitors need to be very careful when ordering two drinks or two stamps in the UK, making sure they turn their hand around to make the peace gesture. The V sign is also something that naughty kids in my school often did out of the back window of the bus at motorists, a situation in which the middle finger doesn’t seem quite right. In contrast, the V sign at a soccer match means something more like the challenge “Come over here if you think you’re hard enough”, “Ha ha ha, you’ll have to do better than that chant if you want to offend us”, or “Ha ha, you can’t get us even if you wanted to (because of the row of police between us)”.

For example, if someone in the crowd at a football match uses the middle finger towards supporters of the other team, it means something like “If you were here, I’d hit you” or “I’ll kill you for what you just chanted”. I would say that the middle finger is more direct and aggressive, and that the V sign is more taunting, defiant or cheeky. Its meaning is something like “f**k you” or “f**k off”, making it similar in offensiveness to the more internationally known “middle finger” gesture explained below. This makes the V sign like a reverse “peace sign”, with the hand turned around. The offensive version of this has your palm facing yourself, meaning the back of your hand is facing the other person. It consists of making a V shape by holding up one hand with your middle finger and index finger held apart from each other and with the other fingers and thumb down. This is the closest thing to a specifically British gesture, being used in only a couple of other countries and being misunderstood and misused even by Americans. All explanations are for right-handed people, but changing hands doesn’t change the meaning. “Right” and “left” below always mean for the person doing the gesture (not for the person viewing it). However, there are also more general articles on this topic on this site with the titles “80 British gestures” and “British body language”, available here: Please note that it is difficult to explain the meanings of offensive gestures without using some rude words, so this article will not be suitable for everyone. This article goes through the most common rude gestures in the UK, starting with ones which are least likely to be understood by people from other countries. By studying things like the “V sign”, language learners can tell if they are being insulted and in exactly what way, understand the hidden message in British movies, and not accidentally make a bad impression on British people. The naughtiness of the topic can also make them more interested and aware of the topic of cultural differences in body language and gestures generally. However, it can be both interesting and useful to know about the more aggressive sides of body language. 1.Teachers can understandably be reluctant to get their students thinking about and making (very) rude gestures during lessons, and we hardly want them to start experimenting with offensive hand movements etc outside the class. Here’s the meaning behind some of the most commonly used hands emojis. (See: The Japanese folding hand emoji, which literally means gratitude, but is widely interpreted in other countries as praying or a high five.)Īs the emoji library continues to expand with updates, including Apple’s March 2022 iOS 15.4 update, it’s always a good time to refresh your emoji fluency - and there’s no better place to start than hand emojis.

And their interpretations even seems to come with their own dialect sometimes. While classics like the peace sign and wave may easily translate from IRL, the language of hand emojis is pretty expansive. well, how is one supposed to know when to use them all? You already figured out when it's appropriate to use the smiling cat as opposed to the crying or laughing cat, as well as what each heart emoji means. If a picture if worth a thousand words, then an emoji is worth at least 10,000, right? But with the sheer number of options to choose from.

Circle joining hands hold pinky thumb