Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
DOOR
“door”
How to make it
Hold two flat hands together, palms out, and swing one open and shut.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
A door on its hinge. OPEN and CLOSE are the same hands doing the whole motion once.
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.
Location
Neutral space
Made at the neutral space.
Movement
a twist of the wrist
The dominant hand acts on a still base hand.
Repeated. Palm facing out.