Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
HOME
“home”
Touch a flattened 'O' hand first near the corner of your mouth, then higher on your cheek.
A live example of historical change you can still see: two touches that used to be two whole signs.
Where the sign comes from
DocumentedDerivation traced in historical-linguistic scholarship.
HOME is a fossilized compound. It began as HOUSE + EAT + SLEEP — the place you eat and sleep. Over time the parts eroded: the sign now touches near the mouth (the remnant of EAT) and the cheek (the remnant of SLEEP, once a hand laid against the cheek). This is Frishberg's assimilation at work — a phrase compressing into a single fluid sign.
- Ferrand c.1785Ferrand, Abbé Jean. Dictionnaire des sourds-muets (manuscript, c. 1785; published 1897 and 2008).
- Shaw & Delaporte 2011Shaw, Emily, and Yves Delaporte. A Historical and Etymological Dictionary of American Sign Language. Gallaudet University Press, 2015 (research 2011). link
- Frishberg 1975 (assimilation)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.
Moves from the mouth to the cheek.
One-handed.
Palm facing in.