• This vulgar gesture of contempt consists in thrusting the thumb between the first and middle fingers. It is the same that the ass-driver made at Dante in the street; Sacchetti, Nov. CXV :⁠— “When he was a little way off, he turned round to Dante, and, thrusting out his tongue and making a fig at him with his hand, said, ‘Take that.’ ” Villani, VI 5, says:⁠— “On the Rock of Carmignano there was a tower seventy yards high, and upon it two marble arms, the hands of which were making the figs at Florence.” Others say these hands were on a finger-post by the roadside. In the Merry Wives of Windsor , I 3, Pistol says:⁠— “Convey, the wise it call; Steal! foh; a fico for the phrase!” And Martino, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Widow , V I :⁠— “The fig of everlasting obloquy Go with him.” ↩