The television show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-I n,” popular in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, was famous for awarding its goofy trophy, the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate. But the term fickle finger of fate is actually decades older than that. This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
2 comments
More from this show
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
I just read a review of a 1950 movie called “Texas Dynamo” in which Smiley Burnette sings a song “Fickle Finger of Fate”.
My dad recently used the term “fickle finger of fate” as a euphemism for the “flipping the bird” gesture – the middle finger, the FU. I had never heard the term before and thus ended up here. So there does seem to be some element of “you’re effed” by the fickle finger of fate, for sure… and it seems like Laugh-in’s awards were basically “giving someone the finger” thought they made it less offensive perhaps by using the pointer-finger for their “award” instead. There’s also a 1967 film with the title. Love slangy stuff like this!