Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
FINISH
“finish”
Hold both '5' hands up, palms toward you, and flip them quickly to face out.
FINISH is a key aspect marker, not just the word 'finished'. 'FINISH EAT' = 'have eaten / already ate'. It also works as a conjunction: 'EAT FINISH, LEAVE' = 'after eating, [I] left'.
Where the sign comes from
DocumentedDerivation traced in historical-linguistic scholarship.
A throwing-off of what's done. FINISH is also one of ASL's most important grammar words — placed before or after a verb it marks completed action, doing the work English does with '-ed' or 'already'.
- ASL-LEXSehyr, 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.
Made at the neutral space.
Both hands move together.
Palm facing in.