DaveAgain wrote:hand gesture. Do you know what it means to rub the tips of your two index fingers together? (This cropped up in a film called
Le père de mademoiselle.)
When I was much younger, growing up in Canada, this hand gesture implied that two people were on “intimate terms”, a notion which might suggest: (a) their sharing hidden, likely forbidden or otherwise illicit carnal knowledge of one another or, (b) their sharing a secretive, unsavory, mutually-beneficial business or political relationship.
I distinctly recall someone older than me demonstrating the rubbing together of their outstretched index fingers and being told that the gesture suggested two bodies aligned together, in bed together, sleeping together; hence the sexual connotation. Some years later, I saw the same gesture being used to suggest that a well-connected businessman and a notoriously-corrupt politician were “in bed together” in a figurative sense.
My understanding of French culture is that a similar meaning is suggested by the rubbing of the two index fingers together, more particularly so should the fingers be rubbed lengthwise one against the other.
Having said that, a given hand gesture can have widely differing meanings in different cultural settings.
EDITED:
Expansion of the text.