Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
AMERICA
“America”
Interlock the fingers of both hands loosely and move them in a horizontal circle.
Where the sign comes from
Form attestedThe older form is recorded, but the origin isn't proven.
The common story — and it's wrong: The fingers are the logs of a log cabin.
Often taught as interlocked 'log cabin' logs. That reading is unsupported. The earliest American source (Long, 1910) describes interlocked *fence rails* 'signifying The Union' — a fence, not a cabin. The authoritative etymological dictionary omits AMERICA entirely, so we mark this as an attested older form rather than a settled origin.
- Long 1910Long, J. Schuyler. The Sign Language: A Manual of Signs. 1st ed. Washington, D.C., 1910. link
The sign, taken apart
Every ASL sign is built from a handshape, a place it's made, and a movement. Learn to see these three and you can read and store any sign.
Made at the neutral space.
Both hands move together.
Palm facing in.