A FEW years ago, a celebrated feminist and academic wrote a lengthy piece for one of the quality papers about what she believed were the origins of the famed two-fingered salute.

The V-sign was, she sniffed, a manifestation of the sexual violence inherent in men. It was a crude gesture which demonstrated that, lurking in the psyche in all males, was the omnipresent beast.

And so on and so on.

It's a familiar theory. All men are rapists - that sort of thing. Very Guardian. Very Independent.

Warming to the theme, our lay psychologist recounted at length her own particular interpretation of the famed gesture. Suffice to say, it went on and on as the intricacies of human nature went under her literary surgeon's knife.

But the matter did not rest there. Long after the newsprint had turned to a faded yellow, readers' letters were coming in by the sack-full as wimmin from far and wide marvelled at the writer's insight and erudition.

Nevertheless, nestling among all this fan mail was a lone contribution that actually gave the true explanation for the old double-digit greeting. And it was this.

During the Middle Ages, when England was permanently at war with France, the most feared soldiers were the English archers. With the six-foot bows of yew and yard-long arrows, these men were the Royal Marine Commandos of their day.

With a killing range of several hundred yards, a steel-tipped shaft was capable of piercing armour and burying itself up to its goose-feathered flights. When fired in volleys, the effect was lethal.

This devastating version of firepower was the deciding factor on many a field of blood, from Crecy to Poitiers - and back again - as the 100 Years War ploughed its bloody furrow across the battlefields of the 14th Century.

Held in awe and fear by the French, should an archer be captured, he could expect the immediate amputation of his first and middle fingers. For those unaccustomed to archery, these are the fingers employed to pull back the bowstring.

In 1415, on the field of Agincourt, Henry V's archers displayed their disdain and contempt for the heavily armoured enemy cavalry by... yes, you've guessed. To a man, up went the massed two fingers.

And that is the origin of this most British of insults. It is all about defiance. And that is something at which the British are rather adept, as history recounts time and time again.

The reason I mention this is because the forces of ignorance have been on the march once again, this time in the guise of PC Chris Jefford of the Metropolitan Police Directorate of Training.

During a police conference, PC Jefford had rebuked a Government Minister for using the phrase "nitty-gritty". Its use is prohibited by the Met because it supposedly has racist overtones dating back to the days of slavery.

John Denham, the police Minister, said it was time to "get down to the nitty-gritty" on training his officers. PC Jefford told the Minister: "As a serving police officer, if I used the term 'nitty-gritty', which you used as moment ago, in our modern politically-correct society I would be facing a disciplinary charge.

"Nitty-gritty is a prohibited term in the modern police service as being a racist term."

A number of delegates mentioned the word "slavery". Mr Jefford said police had been told "nitty-gritty" was thought to have been a term used to describe slaves in the lowest reaches of slave ships.

Other apparently innocuous phrases now frowned on in the Metropolitan Police - which was accused of "institutionalised racism" in the Macpherson inquiry into the bungled Stephen Lawrence case - are "egg and spoon" and "good egg".

Egg and spoon is deemed to be rhyming slang for "coon" - a racially offensive phrase used towards black people - and good egg is said to be linked to it.

This is, of course, complete and utter nonsense.

You don't have to be a university lecturer to know that "good egg" came into widespread use due to the popularity of the P G Wodehouse novels.

As you can see, the assault on the English language continues apace as the educated ignorant hold sway in our society. However, we must attempt to shine some light into their darkness.

"Nitty-gritty" is one of the huge number of rhyming jingles that occur particularly in English and Germanic languages. They proliferate in our oldest literature, from Chaucer through to Shakespeare.

Linguists call them reduplicative words. Others call them ricochet or Siamese twin words. Scholars categorise them into groups such as onomatopoeic (bow-wow) "contrived" (Handy-Andy) "intentional" (gruesome-twosome) and "accidental" (picnic).

In some respects, it is no wonder there is so much confusion about well-known terms and sayings.

Take that old chestnut "it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass money". Many people still labour under the impression that this is vaguely rude, that it conjures up frighteningly excruciating images of simian discomfort in the nether regions.

Nothing could be further than the truth. On the old battleships, the men o' war, the cannon balls would be piled next to the guns on a device resembling a snooker frame. In extreme cold, this brass frame - known as a monkey - would contract and off would tumble the pile of cannon balls.

These would, presumably, be retrieved by boys who served the guns and were known as powder monkeys.

Returning to "the nitty-gritty", its actual origin is unknown. However, it was first recorded in use in the 1950s, with the meaning "heart of the matter" or "core".

An absurd case came about in 1999 when a lawyer resigned from his job in the office of the Public Advocate in Washington DC after complaints of his use of the word niggardly in conversation.

It was thought to sound too much like an offensive word for a black person, to which it is not related. Niggard is first recorded from the 14th Century. Both Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wyclif used it. The sense is a mean person. It is possibly connected to "niggle".

So, all you ignorant, politically-correct po-faces, are you paying attention for a change? We must hope so.

Meanwhile, the lesson that should be learnt by the rest of us is that we cannot allow the English language to be hijacked by the ignoramuses of our new ruling elite.

That is, of course, unless they want to see our collective two-fingered salute. And that really would be getting down to the nitty-gritty.