Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
BOY
“boy”
How to make it
At the forehead, open and close a flattened hand at the brim-line, as if tipping the peak of a cap.
Where the sign comes from
DocumentedDerivation traced in historical-linguistic scholarship.
The common story — and it's wrong: The hand grips a cap brim.
The hand grasps and *tips* the peak of a boy's cap at the brow — the male locus again. A common teaching says the hand 'grips a brim'; the documented motion is tipping, not gripping.
Sources
- Shaw & Delaporte 2011Shaw, Emily, and Yves Delaporte. A Historical and Etymological Dictionary of American Sign Language. Gallaudet University Press, 2015 (research 2011). link
- Long 1918 (male-at-forehead form)Long, J. Schuyler. The Sign Language: A Manual of Signs. 2nd ed. Gallaudet College, 1918. 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.
Location
Forehead
Made at the forehead.
Movement
the hand opening and closing
One-handed.
Palm facing down.