It means so many other things, like protest or rage or excitement, it's not just a phallus.

BBC: When did the middle finger become offensive?

It features a scorpion, phallus, snake and crab, but the meaning of the combination "is lost" an expert said.

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'I think originally the pole looked like this, ' says Loulou Nyman, an ordained minister, as she helpfully draws a phallus in my notebook.

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In the prudish centuries the moral castigators preached that Pompeii must indeed have been a most immoral city because the phallus was everywhere.

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The cave is piled high with lingams of every shape, size and colour, all the way up to a seven-foot phallus, wrapped in ribbons.

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Among the haul is what the museum says is the largest group of fist and phallus good luck charms ever recovered from one site.

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There is an intriguing lamp in which a gladiator is locked in combat with his phallus which has been transformed into a ferocious beast.

ECONOMIST: Archaeology

Mr. FLAVIO FERREIRA (Architect): You know, it's the only great space of the neighborhood of Copacabana, and they fill it with a kind of flaccid phallus.

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While the middle finger may historically have symbolised a phallus, it has lost that distinctive meaning and is no longer even obscene, says Ira Robbins, a law professor at American University in Washington DC, who has studied the gesture's place in criminal jurisprudence.

BBC: When did the middle finger become offensive?