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TOYT

Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.

Everyday·Level 1·Video corpus

TOY

toy

How to make it

Hold two 'T' hands out in front of you and twist them at the wrist.

Where the sign comes from

Documented

Derivation traced in historical-linguistic scholarship.

Initialized with T, using the twisting movement of PLAY (which uses Y hands). An initialized variant of an existing sign.

Sources
  • Battison 1978 (initialization)Battison, Robbin. Lexical Borrowing in American Sign Language. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press, 1978.
All references and how we grade evidence

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.

Handshape

A fist with the thumb tucked between index and middle finger.

Also: letter T

Location
Neutral space

Made at the neutral space.

Movement
a twist of the wrist

Both hands move together.

Repeated. Palm facing out.