Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
PIZZA
“pizza”
Regional: a bent 'V' hand draws a Z in the air; or a 'P' hand traces a slice toward the mouth.
Where the sign comes from
UnknownNo reliable source. We'd rather say so than invent one.
PIZZA has several regional forms and no settled origin. The bent-V version is probably a compressed fingerspelling of the Z; the P-hand version is initialized. We do not know which came first.
No sources — which is the point of the “unknown” tier. If you know of a documented account, the historical databases are where to check it.
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.
One-handed.
Palm facing out.
Regional variation
More than one sign can be correct. Rather than hide that, we name it — regional variants are a feature of a living language, not a mistake.