flip the bird
English
[edit](This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
[edit]flip the bird (third-person singular simple present flips the bird, present participle flipping the bird, simple past and past participle flipped the bird)
- (colloquial, idiomatic) To make a rude or obscene gesture (at somebody); particularly, to extend the middle finger.
- Synonyms: flick off, flip off, give the finger, give the bird
- I accidentally bumped into him, and he flipped me the bird.
- 2005, Vince Flynn, Consent to Kill[1], page 135:
- He held his right hand up in front of his face and flipped the bird.
- 2007, R. D. Reynolds, The Wrestlecrap Book of Lists![2], page 350:
- The vaunted Attitude era was built, in many ways, on a level of crudity never before seen in wrestling. You had guys flipping the bird, women nearly naked in the ring and guys telling each other to “suck it.”
- 2008, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Everybody Sucks, American Society of Magazine Editors (compilers), The Best American Magazine Writing 2008, page 9,
- This summer, she took some time off in Maine, and before she went posted a picture of herself on Gawker in a bathing suit flipping the bird — "At least I didn't put up the ones of myself in a silver-lame bikini. That would have been a little much," she said, laughing.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see flip, bird.
Usage notes
[edit]In the idiomatic sense, often used with an indirect object in the form flip [someone] the bird.
Translations
[edit]to make a rude or obscene gesture, particularly with the middle finger
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