Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
HURT
“hurt / owie”
Point two index fingers at each other and twist them toward one another — at the place that hurts, if you like.
One of the clearest cases of location carrying meaning: move HURT to the body part and the sentence is complete.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
Two points of pain jabbing toward each other. The sign travels: made at the head it means HEADACHE, at the stomach STOMACH-ACHE.
- 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.
Made at the neutral space.
Both hands move together.
Repeated. Palm facing in.