Motion diagram. A Deaf-recorded clip from the PopSign corpus (CC BY 4.0) exists for this sign and can be placed here.
WHITE
“white”
Place an open '5' hand on your chest and pull it away as the fingers close into a flat 'O'.
Where the sign comes from
UnknownNo reliable source. We'd rather say so than invent one.
Commonly explained as pulling out the ruffle of a white shirt front. That is a plausible mnemonic, and the sign has an LSF cousin, but we have not found a source that establishes the origin.
No sources — which is the point of the “unknown” tier. If you know of a documented account, the historical databases are where to check it.
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 chest to the neutral space.
One-handed.
Palm facing in.
Easy to confuse with
These differ from WHITE in one or two parameters — the minimal pairs our receptive drills use to make sure you can really tell them apart.