Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
KNOW
“know”
How to make it
Tap the fingertips of a slightly bent flat hand against the side of your forehead.
Grammar
Add a head shake and a small outward flip of the hand for DON'T-KNOW — negation built into the movement.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
The forehead is where ASL places the mind: KNOW, THINK, LEARN, UNDERSTAND and REMEMBER all touch or leave from it.
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
Forehead
Made at the forehead.
Movement
a tap
One-handed.
Palm facing in.