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Rude gestures in Greece


Rude gestures in Greece

To "swear" at someone using their hands, Greeks put out their entire hand, palm open, five fingers extended out, like signalling someone to stop. This is called "mountza". Sometimes they will do this by saying "na" (here) as well. It is basically telling someone to screw off or that they did something totally ridiculous. "Mountza" is known to come from a gesture used in the Byzantine era, where the guilty person were applied with ash on his/her face by the judge's hand, in order to be ridiculed. Be careful when refusing something in Greece: when refusing the offer of drink, it's best to put your palm over your glass (or any other refusing gesture that limits the showing of the palm). The ubiqutous middle finger salute will also be understood. There is some regional variation on the use of the 'okay' sign (thumb and index finger in a circle, the 3 other fingers up), as is signalling to a waiter by miming signing a receipt.

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Greece Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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