Fig sign (mano fico)

How to read it

In Italy the gesture is the mano fica, and making it is far la fica; in French it is faire la figue. Elworthy, whose book The Evil Eye appeared in 1895, wrote that it had a technical name of its own in Italy because it was so common there, and that the English idiom “Don’t care a fig” carries the same contempt and implies the gesture. Whether it insults or protects depends on who makes it and at whom.

Also searched as: far la fica, fico, figa, fig gesture, mano fica, mano fico, thumb between fingers gesture.

An insult

Elworthy, drawing on Andrea de Jorio’s 1832 study of Neapolitan gesture, recorded that Jorio counted it among the most insulting gestures, the equivalent of the English “A fig for you!”. Elworthy called it “a gesture of defiance and of insult among all nations”.

A charm against the evil eye

In Naples, Jorio wrote, its most common use was as an amulet against the evil eye: the maker said “Te faccio na fica”, meaning “May the evil eye do you no harm!”, the same meaning as making the horns. The protective use reached England too. Elworthy quotes Dean Ramsay, who remembered schoolboys in Yorkshire between 1800 and 1810 putting the thumb between the first and second finger, pointing downwards, against a witch they feared.

As an amulet

Carved hands in this position were made as charms. The Science Museum Group holds one, a carved wooden hand and arm with the thumb inserted between the index and next finger, catalogued as a vernacular mano fica, possibly Brazilian, from 1870 to 1930.