Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
BUG
“bug”
How to make it
Touch the thumb of a '3' hand to your nose and bend the index and middle fingers twice.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
Two waving antennae on the front of the face.
Sources
- ASL-LEX (iconicity)Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova, Naomi Caselli, Ariel Cohen-Goldberg, and Karen Emmorey. "The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A Database of Lexical and Phonological Properties for 2,723 Signs in American Sign Language." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 26, no. 2 (2021): 263–277. 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.
Handshape
Starts as thumb, index, and middle out; ends as index and middle spread but bent at the knuckle (claw-two).
Also: number 3
Location
Nose
Made at the nose.
Movement
wiggling fingers
One-handed.
Repeated. Palm facing left.