Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
WHAT
“what”
Hold both open hands palm-up and give a small shake, brows drawn together.
The hands are the smaller half of this sign. WH-questions (what, where, who, why) require *furrowed brows* held across the whole question. Sign WHAT with a flat face and it doesn't read as a question at all — the grammar is on your face.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
The open, upturned 'give me' hands — the body asking to be filled in.
- ASL-LEXSehyr, 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.
Made at the neutral space.
Both hands move together.
Palm facing up.