Bras d'honneur

A bras d'honneur (French pronunciation: ​[bʁa dɔˈnœʁ] "arm of honor"), Iberian slap (Spanish: corte de manga, Portuguese: manguito), or Italian salute[1] is an obscene gesture that communicates moderate to extreme contempt, and is roughly equivalent in meaning to "fuck me", "fuck you", "shove it up your ass/arse", "up yours" or "go fuck yourself", having the same meaning as giving the finger (known as le doigt d'honneur). It is most common in Romanic Europe (Italy, France, Portugal, Spain), Latin America, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey, Georgia, Québec, Ireland and in parts of Scotland. To make the gesture, an arm is bent in an L-shape, with the fist pointing upwards; the other hand then grips the biceps of the bent arm as it is emphatically raised to a vertical position.

Bras d'honneur

International nomenclature
  • In Italy, the gesture is often referred to as gesto dell'ombrello, meaning literally "umbrella gesture." Its most famous occurrence in Italian cinema is in Federico Fellini's I vitelloni (1953), where the idler played by Alberto Sordi jeers at a group of workmen, combining this gesture with a raspberry.[2]
  • In Brazil, the gesture is known as a "banana" and carries the same connotation as giving someone the finger. It can also be used to denote disrespectfully ignoring what someone just said, analogous in meaning to the American expression, "I don't give a fuck."[3]
  • In Japan, the gesture is seen more positively, and is often used as a means of showing courage or determination.[4] To perform the gesture, the hand is placed on the opposite bicep, and then the bicep is flexed. This gesture sometimes appears in video games produced in the country, and so has often had to be removed during the process of game localisation to avoid causing offence.[5]
  • Portugal has a similar term, "manguito". It is also the most characteristic gesture performed by the Portuguese everyman "Zé Povinho".[3]
  • In Poland, the gesture is known as wał or gest Kozakiewicza ("Kozakiewicz's gesture") after Władysław Kozakiewicz, who famously displayed this gesture after winning the gold medal in the pole vault at the 1980 Summer Olympics in front of a hostile crowd in Moscow.[6] This coincided with the rise of the Solidarity Union in Poland in 1980.
  • In Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, the gesture is known as bosanski grb[7] ("The Bosnian Coat-of-Arms") after the territorial coat of arms of Bosnia during the Austro-Hungarian reign, that is somewhat similar to the actual gesture. The Gesture is also called "od šake do lakta" ("From the fist to the elbow").

See also

References
  1. Hughes, Geoffrey (2015). "italian+salute" An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World. Routledge. p. 259
  2. "Fellini – I vitelloni". YouTube.
  3. História de nossos gestos
  4. "Common Japanese Gestures". NILS Fukuoka Times. Retrieved 2020-06-18.
  5. "Why This Gesture Keeps Being Removed From Games". Censored Gaming, YouTube.
  6. "gest Kozakiewicza Moskwa 1980". YouTube.
  7. "Vreme", 4. maj 1938. digitalna.nb.rs (Serbian)
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