And its meaning can change over time. News stories from reported that US troops travelling through Iraq were greeted by Iraqis with their thumbs up. Were the locals offering their support to the foreign forces or being rude? According to the US Defense Language Institute, a body that provides foreign language training for US forces, Middle Easterners had adopted the Western use of the thumbs up after the first Gulf War as a symbol of their support.
Perhaps they weren't being as rude as some thought. More recent diplomatic trips to the Middle East also suggest that the Western use is widespread. But even in the West, a thumbs up does not universally mean the same thing.
Scuba divers, for example, use thumbs up to mean " I'm going up to the surface ". The origins of the thumbs up are contentious. Some attribute it to the climax of gladiatorial battles, in which the fate of the losing fighter was decided. Whether a thumbs up or down meant life or death , or whether any thumb at all was a good thing, is disputed.
That the gesture of showing someone your thumb has survived longer than the spoken Latin language is mightily impressive, says Gawne. It shows the power of a gesture to cross cultures and time. But, the fact that its origins are mysterious and its use has changed from being an indication of life or death to "everything is OK" or something obscene, demonstrates that hand gestures might not have the same meaning forever.
Like with the Iraqis greeting the Americans, it's possible for a gesture to mean two things at once, or two gestures to mean the same thing. You could shake your head or you could withdraw your head, pulling it away from the other speaker. Another example of a meaning that has various gestures is pointing. Nick Enfield, a professor of linguistic anthropology from the University of Sydney, suggests that pointing was a precursor to language itself , essential to early human communication.
But pointing is not the same in every culture. In parts of the Americas, Africa, southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, pointing with the head, nose or lips is common. Cooperrider suggests that those cultures might value discretion when, for example, hunting. It is important to be able to subtly communicate the direction of a target without raising attention.
So, if something as universal as approval, disapproval and pointing can be different across cultures, is there anything that has the same meaning to everyone?
And would those gestures stand the test of time? For English speakers, time moves from left to right and we tend to gesture about things in the future in front of our bodies and things in the past over our shoulders, he says. Both Gawne and Cooperrider say that the "palm-up shrug" appears to be very common, though its origins are not certain. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about and painted the gesture in the 15th Century three of the attendees in The Last Supper appear to be shrugging.
But Cooperrider has also studied modern cultures, from Arabic to Zulu, in which the gesture seems to translate. Gestures that communicate a specific meaning, like "I don't know" or "everything is OK", are called emblematic gestures. The connection is obvious to people from those countries: the word for "cuckold" in Italian, Spanish, and Greek is the same word for "horned. But make the same gesture in Brazil, and you're giving the equivalent to the middle finger — the gesture has " insulting and scatological connotations," as the New York Times put it.
Richard Nixon once raised some eyebrows in the s when he made the gesture in Brazil as he stepped off a plane. Americans should be aware that the gesture has multiple meanings at home, too — in recent years, the OK symbol has been linked with white supremacy groups. But not in Vietnam. There, the gesture is thought to resemble female genitals, and making it is similar to giving the middle finger. However, in several countries in West Africa and the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the gesture has the connotation of "up yours!
For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. It was a positive image from a war situation that could be brought back home and put in the papers," Rashotte said. The thumbs-up took a small hit in the s and s as anti-war sentiments took center stage and the peace sign became the more popular positive gesture.
The Fonz! Roshette said the sitcom "Happy Days," which first aired in , likely revived the thumbs-up. The show's too-cool character Fonzie Arthur Fonzarelli, played by Henry Winkler , often flipped both thumbs-up while flashing a dashing grin and delivering a gravelly "aaaaaaaay. With its widespread usage in the United States, the "everything is good" sign might be here to stay.
In other regions, the thumbs-up sign is also popular, though it can have various meanings. In Iran and Greece, it can be the equivalent of "flipping someone off," Rashotte said. In India, the meaning changes depending on whether the gesture is accompanied by certain words or other hand movements, she added.
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