Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
TIME
“time”
Tap the back of your wrist with a bent index finger.
Where the sign comes from
Folk etymology — correctedA widely-taught story that scholarship refutes.
The common story — and it's wrong: You're pointing at where a wristwatch sits.
The obvious explanation — you're pointing at a wristwatch — is false. The sign is documented in 1885, decades before wristwatches were worn, and descends from the French sign for 'hour' (heure). The wristwatch is a coincidence the modern eye reads backward onto an older sign.
- Clark 1885Clark, W. P. The Indian Sign Language, with Brief Explanatory Notes. Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersly, 1885. link
- Shaw & Delaporte 2011 (LSF heure)Shaw, Emily, and Yves Delaporte. A Historical and Etymological Dictionary of American Sign Language. Gallaudet University Press, 2015 (research 2011). 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 wrist.
The dominant hand acts on a still base hand.
Repeated. Palm facing down.