# Fig sign
The fig sign is a hand gesture made by closing the fingers into a fist and protruding the thumb between the index and middle fingers. Its meaning depends sharply on place and use: in much of southern Europe it is an obscene insult, in Russia and parts of the Slavic world it signals a mocking refusal, and in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil the same shape works as a protective amulet and good-luck charm.[1](https://magichouserecipes.com/articles/meaning-of-the-trapped-thumb-gesture) • [2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Form | A closed fist with the thumb protruding between the forefinger and middle finger.[1](https://magichouserecipes.com/articles/meaning-of-the-trapped-thumb-gesture) |
| Names | mano fico (Italian), higa (Spanish), figa (Portuguese/Brazilian), kukish (кукиш), figa, or dulya (Russian), šipak (Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia), Neidfeige (German).[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) • [3](https://unitesi.unive.it/retrieve/ce6ea577-1534-46c0-b23b-bf116d246958/820853-1187396.pdf) • [4](https://search.smb.museum/object/obj-899265) |
| Oldest attestation | "Giving the fig" (Old French *faire la figue*, Spanish *dar la higa*) is described as an indecent gesture of ancient provenance, roughly equivalent to the modern middle finger.[5](https://www.etymonline.com/word/fig) |
| Roman use | Worn as an amulet against the evil eye; Ovid's *Fasti* describes the head of a household making the sign during the Lemuria to ward off spirits of the dead.[6](https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/pestalozzi/Source/Documentation/TU/TU_VIEWS_Kalnina_EN.pdf) • [2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) |
| Insult regions | A grave sexual insult when aimed at a person in Italy, Greece, Malta, and Turkey; in Russia it most often conveys 'nothing' or 'you're not getting anything', rather than a grave sexual insult.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) • [7](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/thumb-between-fingers-fig) |
| Refusal meaning | In Russian the gesture (kukish or figa) means "you get nothing", a curt and slightly mocking refusal.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) |
| Amulet regions | A protective charm and good-luck sign in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, where the carved or metal figa is a traditional object.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) • [8](https://symbolhubs.com/hand-gesture/fig-sign/) |
| Other reading | The same handshape is the letter T in American Sign Language.[9](https://cte.univ-setif2.dz/moodle/pluginfile.php/116711/mod_folder/content/0/CCC%20Lectures.pdf) |
## Form and names
Gesture scholars treat the fig sign as an emblem: a conventional handshape with a fixed, culturally shared meaning, learned as part of a community's language-like repertoire rather than self-explanatory from its shape. In its open edition of *The Semiotics of French Gestures*, Indiana University Press describes the fig sign as a fist in which the thumb sticks out between the forefinger and middle finger, offering it as an instance of a gesture whose significance rests on convention rather than being immediately obvious.[1](https://magichouserecipes.com/articles/meaning-of-the-trapped-thumb-gesture) The names attached to it record its long history. Italian has *mano fico* and the phrase *fare la fica*; Spanish *dar la higa*; Portuguese and Brazilian *figa*, the word for the gesture and for the amulet shaped like the hand.[5](https://www.etymonline.com/word/fig) • [2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) Russian speakers call it *kukish* (кукиш), *figa* (фига), or *dulya*.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) In Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia the gesture is known as *šipak*, a word referring to the vagina.[3](https://unitesi.unive.it/retrieve/ce6ea577-1534-46c0-b23b-bf116d246958/820853-1187396.pdf) German tradition preserves the term Neidfeige for amulets in this shape.[4](https://search.smb.museum/object/obj-899265)
## Ancient origins
The Latin phrase *facere ficum*, "to make the fig", already denoted a gesture of contempt and mockery in antiquity.[2](https://www.codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) The obscene reading is old: in Italy, Greece, Malta, and Turkey the thumb mimes penetration and the fingers the vulva.[2](https://www.codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) A study of insulting gestures in Roman antiquity notes that the fig sign was used in Rome, though with meanings not identical to the modern ones.[10](https://revistas.uva.es/index.php/minerva/en/article/view/2751) Archaeological work on Roman magical objects describes the *manus fica* made by balling the hand into a fist and tucking the thumb beneath the forefinger, a symbol historically interpreted as a representation of sexual intercourse and used for apotropaic purposes, that is, to ward off harm; one such study cites Ovid, *Fasti* 5.430-435, for its apotropaic use.[11](https://oro.open.ac.uk/84035/1/Parker_PhD_FINAL-ImagesRedacted.pdf)
**Ovid's testimony.** The clearest ancient description of the protective use comes from Ovid's *Fasti*. There the head of the household, performing the rites of the Lemuria, the nocturnal May festival for appeasing the spirits of the dead, makes a sign with his thumb in the middle of his closed fingers so that no unsubstantial shade meets him in the silence.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) • [11](https://oro.open.ac.uk/84035/1/Parker_PhD_FINAL-ImagesRedacted.pdf) In ancient Rome an image of a hand in the fig sign (*mano fico*) was worn as an amulet to protect against the evil eye.[6](https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/pestalozzi/Source/Documentation/TU/TU_VIEWS_Kalnina_EN.pdf) The two senses, obscene and protective, are ancient and have coexisted since antiquity; there was no late shift from one to the other.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign)
## Regional meanings
**The grave insult.** In Italy, Greece, Malta, and Turkey, the gesture aimed at a person is a serious sexual obscenity, the local equivalent of the middle finger.[2](https://www.codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) Its meaning and severity vary across Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia; in Russia, for example, the gesture often means "nothing" or "you're not getting anything," so a Western visitor performing it innocently, for example in the "I've got your nose" children's game, does not necessarily give serious offense in every country listed.[7](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/thumb-between-fingers-fig)
**The refusal.** In Russia and part of the Slavic world the charge is lighter. The kukish or figa conveys a curt, slightly mocking refusal: "you get nothing". It enters Russian phraseology in expressions such as *kukish s maslom* ("a fig with butter"), and it can accompany the answer that the other person will not get what they want.[2](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign) • [12](https://ruslang.ru/sites/default/files/doc/savchuk/Savchuk-2021-LaMo.pdf) A Russian folk legend reported in 2014 holds that Slavic peoples adopted the gesture from Germanic travelers who used it as a crude sexual advance, and that in the Slavic context it transformed into a symbol of definitive refusal.[7](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/thumb-between-fingers-fig)
## The figa as amulet
In Portugal the figa tradition parallels the Italian and Brazilian ones: the word carries the same anatomical slang meaning, and the amulet, often a red coral or gold hand charm, is part of traditional folk protection against the evil eye, particularly in northern Portugal and the Alentejo region.[8](https://symbolhubs.com/hand-gesture/fig-sign/)
Brazil received the figa largely through the [African diaspora](https://www.edgepedia.org/african-diaspora), where the amulet was reimagined as protection, gesture, and prayer.[13](https://www.roqueboamorte.com/en/figas-maos-ancestrais) In the northeastern state of Bahia, the *penca de balangandã*, a cluster of figurative amulets hung on a chain, was worn exclusively by enslaved women of African descent; among its charms the hand posed in the fig gesture was thought to ward off evil spirits.[14](https://sanantonio.emuseum.com/objects/480/penca-de-balangandan?ctx=9afa35c3892e11041477b2444b451630ad083a9a&idx=0) Figas appear in Brazilian post-mortem inventories alongside other amulets and religious medals, worn by white, Black, creole, and mixed-race women alike, sometimes many at once on a single penca.[15](https://historialuso.an.gov.br/glossario/index.php/verbetes-glossario/42-verbetes-iniciados-em-f/1012-figuinha) At the Cais do Valongo, the excavated wharf of the Rio de Janeiro slave market, figas count among the recovered amulets; a nineteenth-century observer described them as customarily fashioned from gold, silver, ivory, or jet, and recorded them as the most widespread amulet in Brazil.[16](https://seer.pucgoias.edu.br/index.php/habitus/article/view/14894) • [17](https://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/publicacao/valongo4_07mai_web.pdf) Museums hold examples in bone, wood, and metal, including a bone figa of unidentified date in the Museu Afro Brasil collection.[18](https://museuafrobrasil.org.br/acervo/figa/)
## The fig sign today
In everyday conversation the gesture has receded; commentators describe it as rarely used in a world of direct verbal expression, though its meaning remains active wherever tradition keeps it.[19](https://torlib.com/the-surprising-history-and-cultural-meaning-of-the-fig-hand-gesture/) The handshape survives in contexts with no insult value at all: it is the letter T in [American Sign Language](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-sign-language), and it doubles as the "got your nose" game in Italy and elsewhere, which is precisely what makes accidental use hazardous across cultures.[9](https://cte.univ-setif2.dz/moodle/pluginfile.php/116711/mod_folder/content/0/CCC%20Lectures.pdf) • [7](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/thumb-between-fingers-fig)
The gesture has also become a test case for cross-cultural computing. The MC-SIGNS dataset, built by Carnegie Mellon researchers in 2025, catalogs 288 gesture-country pairs annotated for offensiveness and cultural significance across 25 gestures and 85 countries, the fig sign among them; the study found that text-to-image systems show strong US-centric bias, large language models tend to over-flag gestures as offensive, and vision-language models default to US-based interpretations when asked about concepts like wishing someone luck.[20](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17710) A rock crystal fig-sign amulet made in Germany around 1500 CE, now in Berlin's Kunstgewerbemuseum, shows how long the protective tradition ran in Europe north of the Mediterranean.[4](https://search.smb.museum/object/obj-899265)
## References
1. [Meaning of the Trapped-Thumb Gesture, Magic House Recipes](https://magichouserecipes.com/articles/meaning-of-the-trapped-thumb-gesture)
2. [The figue (mano fico), Codex Mundi](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/mano-fico-fig-sign)
3. [Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia: the fig sign as šipak, University of Venice working document](https://unitesi.unive.it/retrieve/ce6ea577-1534-46c0-b23b-bf116d246958/820853-1187396.pdf)
4. [Amulett in Form einer Neidfeige, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin](https://search.smb.museum/object/obj-899265)
5. [Fig, Etymology, Origin & Meaning, Online Etymology Dictionary](https://www.etymonline.com/word/fig)
6. [Pestalozzi Training Resources, Council of Europe](https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/pestalozzi/Source/Documentation/TU/TU_VIEWS_Kalnina_EN.pdf)
7. [The fig sign (thumb between fingers), Codex Mundi](https://codex-mundi.com/en/entries/thumb-between-fingers-fig)
8. [Fig Sign Gesture Meaning, SymbolHubs](https://symbolhubs.com/hand-gesture/fig-sign/)
9. [Cross-cultural communication lecture materials, University of Sétif](https://cte.univ-setif2.dz/moodle/pluginfile.php/116711/mod_folder/content/0/CCC%20Lectures.pdf)
10. [Insultar con gestos en la Roma antigua y hoy, Minerva (Universidad de Valladolid)](https://revistas.uva.es/index.php/minerva/en/article/view/2751)
11. [Adam Parker, doctoral thesis on amuletic objects, Open Research Online](https://oro.open.ac.uk/84035/1/Parker_PhD_FINAL-ImagesRedacted.pdf)
12. [On the diachronic aspect of gestural communication, Savchuk 2021](https://ruslang.ru/sites/default/files/doc/savchuk/Savchuk-2021-LaMo.pdf)
13. [Figa, Ancestral Hands, Roque Boa Morte](https://www.roqueboamorte.com/en/figas-maos-ancestrais)
14. [Penca de balangandãn, San Antonio Museum of Art](https://sanantonio.emuseum.com/objects/480/penca-de-balangandan?ctx=9afa35c3892e11041477b2444b451630ad083a9a&idx=0)
15. [Figuinha, glossary entry, Arquivo Nacional (Brazil)](https://historialuso.an.gov.br/glossario/index.php/verbetes-glossario/42-verbetes-iniciados-em-f/1012-figuinha)
16. [Entre os dedos: a figa como amuleto polissêmico, Revista Habitus (2025)](https://seer.pucgoias.edu.br/index.php/habitus/article/view/14894)
17. [Dossiê Sítio Arqueológico Cais do Valongo, IPHAN](https://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/publicacao/valongo4_07mai_web.pdf)
18. [Figa, Museu Afro Brasil collection record](https://museuafrobrasil.org.br/acervo/figa/)
19. [The Surprising History and Cultural Meaning of the Fig Hand Gesture, TorLib](https://torlib.com/the-surprising-history-and-cultural-meaning-of-the-fig-hand-gesture/)
20. [Mind the Gesture: Evaluating AI Sensitivity to Culturally Offensive Non-Verbal Gestures, arXiv:2502.17710](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17710)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Conflict and security › Ranks, honours, and service traditions › Service traditions and regimental culture › Salutes and ceremonies › Political and protest salutes*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license