Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
SCHOOL
“school”
How to make it
Clap the fingers of a flat hand down onto the other flat palm twice — a teacher clapping for attention.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
A teacher's clap to call the class to order.
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
Weak palm
Made at the weak palm.
Movement
a tap
The dominant hand acts on a still base hand.
Repeated. Palm facing down.