Meaning
To not care in the slightest; to be wholly indifferent to someone or something. Almost always negative - 'I don't give a fig what reviewers say.' The fig is a byword for the least valuable thing there is, and behind the harmless fruit lurks the old Mediterranean obscene gesture, the fico or fig sign, so the phrase is a polite fossil of an ancient insult. Care a fig is an alternative form, not a different phrase. The fig sign's obscene provenance is now largely forgotten in English use. Do not confuse with in full fig (attire), a separate word history. Regional use: British and American English; the gesture sense Mediterranean in origin.
Origin
The worthless sense is old: Merriam-Webster's entry for fig carries the sense 'a worthless trifle: the least bit' ('doesn't care a fig'), and Wiktionary labels the sense from the fifteenth century. Etymonline dates the insulting 'A fig for...' formula to the 1570s and ties it both to fig as a small, valueless thing and to the obscene gesture - giving the fig, Old French faire la figue, Spanish dar la higa, the thumb thrust between closed fingers. Wikipedia traces the sign, the manus fica, to ancient Rome, and Dante has a character make figs at God in the Inferno. Shakespeare used the formula in 2 Henry VI (written 1591): 'and a fig for Peter!' - verified on Wiktionary - and the epilogue of 2 Henry IV plays on the Spanish insult. Fixed negative uses follow in Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-48), 'he did not care a fig', and Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), 'gave not a fig'.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a fig for
- couldn't give a fig
- not care a fig
Usage Examples
- The critics hated the last album and the band did not give a fig.
- He says he doesn't care a fig about the family fortune, and for once I believe him.
- A fig for their traffic survey - the crossing was wanted by the whole street.