"THUMBS UP"
"The novel gesture of "thumbs up" is up to a point a gesture of defiance, but it differs from all the ' I other gesture, of defiance that I know in being a good-humoured gesture of defiance. Soldiers and sailors who have been through the furnace, when they hold their thumbs up, are always; smiling. Here we see the symbolic gesture of a new heroic age, which is as good-humoured as it is heroio. Of the origin of the gesture I have been able to discover nothing. Some people trace it back to the amphitheatre, where the spectators shut up their thumbs in their fists if they wished a gladiator's life to be spared. But the modern thumbs up gesture seems to me to be totally unlike that. Why the tniumb be chosen in all these gestures it is difficult to say. In Scandinavian countries, according to the, authorities, 'There's my thumb on it' is, or was, a popular saying, referring to the custom of licking thei thumb when sealing a bargain. But what genius I aught the modern Englishman to hold his thumb up as a presage of victory, jor w'hen he did so, is» beyond con* i jecture."—"Y.Y." in the New States- ' man and Nation.
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 308, 21 May 1941, Page 5
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208"THUMBS UP" Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 308, 21 May 1941, Page 5
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