Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
PRETTY
“pretty”
Start an open '5' hand at your forehead and circle it around your face, closing to a flat 'O' at the chin.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
The hand outlines a face, gathering it up as something to admire. BEAUTIFUL is the same sign with a fuller movement.
- 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.
Starts as all five fingers spread open; ends as fingertips flattened down to meet the thumb (a closed 'beak').
Also: number 5
Moves from the forehead to the chin.
One-handed.
Palm facing in.