Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
CUT
“cut”
How to make it
Open and close the two fingers of a 'V' hand like scissors as the hand moves forward.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
Scissor blades. Made in place without moving forward, the same hand is SCISSORS — a noun-verb pair.
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
- Supalla & Newport 1978Supalla, Ted, and Elissa Newport. "How Many Seats in a Chair? The Derivation of Nouns and Verbs in American Sign Language." In Understanding Language through Sign Language Research, edited by Patricia Siple, 91–132. Academic Press, 1978.
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 index and middle spread, the rest closed; ends as index and middle together, pointing up.
Also: letter V, number 2
Location
Neutral space
Made at the neutral space.
Movement
the hand opening and closing + a straight path
One-handed.
Repeated. Palm facing down.