The oldest definite record of someone using a V-⁠sign only dates back as far as 1901, when there is documentary footage of a young man who clearly didn’t want to be filmed using the gesture to camera outside an ironworks. This proves that the gesture was being used by the late nineteenth century. According to the legend, English archers waved their fingers in contempt at their French counterparts, who were supposed to be in the habit of cutting off the fingers of captured bowmen  — a fingerless archer being useless, as he could not draw back the string.

But if archers were captured by the French they were much more likely to be killed rather than be subject to the time-⁠consuming process of having their fingers amputated. Prisoners were usually only taken to be ransomed and bowmen were considered inferior merchandise. Whatever its date of origin, the V-⁠sign wasn’t universally understood until quite recently when Winston Churchill first began to use it.