Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
EXCITED
“excited”
How to make it
Brush the bent middle fingers of both 'open 8' hands up your chest in alternating circles.
Where the sign comes from
DocumentedDerivation traced in historical-linguistic scholarship.
The 'feeling' handshape stirring upward on the chest — the same handshape family as FEEL, and the same rising chest movement as HAPPY.
Sources
- Frishberg 1975 (parameter families)Frishberg, Nancy. "Arbitrariness and Iconicity: Historical Change in American Sign Language." Language 51, no. 3 (1975): 696–719. 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
Chest
Made at the chest.
Movement
a brushing motion + a circle
Both hands move together.
Repeated. Palm facing in.