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Hand gestures

What common hand gestures and their emoji mean, and where the same gesture means something else.

Test yourself: Hand gestures quiz

Italian and Mediterranean gestures 6 symbols

Gestures read differently abroad 4 symbols

Greetings and blessings 3 symbols

About hand gestures

A hand gesture means what the people around it take it to mean, and the same hand can praise in one country and insult in the next. These pages give each gesture’s readings place by place, with each one credited to the researcher, reporter or guide who records it. The emoji versions are here too, with their Unicode names, because people read 🤌, 👍 and 🙏 differently by generation as well as by country.

Italian and Mediterranean gestures

Neapolitans were writing about their gestures by 1832, when Andrea de Jorio published his study of them, and Frederick Elworthy drew on it in 1895 for the horned hand and the fig, both made against the evil eye and both insults when aimed at someone. The pinched fingers ask “what do you want?”. Desmond Morris mapped the chin flick changing from an insult in northern Italy to a plain “no” south of Rome, and found the eyelid pull moving from “I’m watching you” in France to “watch out for him” in Italy. The cheek screw praises food in Italy and insults a man in southern Spain.

Gestures read differently abroad

Morris counted the V sign, the thumbs up and the OK circle among the few gestures that spread across Europe, mostly during the Second World War. They didn’t keep one meaning. Roger Axtell told NPR that the OK sign means money in Japan, zero in the south of France and something very rude in Brazil. Slate, citing Axtell, gave the thumbs up an insulting meaning in parts of West Africa, Iran and Greece, and Zhukova and Herring found Gen Z reading 👍 as less friendly than older users do. The V sign is victory, peace or a photo pose; with the palm turned in, the reversed V is a British insult.

Greetings and blessings

The shaka says “hang loose” in Hawaii. The folded hands of 🙏 are prayer, thanks or “please”, and in Japan also sorry. The Vulcan salute came to Star Trek from the priestly blessing Leonard Nimoy saw in synagogue as a boy.

Sources

  1. “What do you want?” Pinched Fingers Emoji Proposal, Adriano Farano, Jennifer 8. Lee and Theo Schear (Emojination), L2/19-159, 17 April 2019, Unicode Consortium document register, Introduction
  2. The Evil Eye (Elworthy, 1895), Frederick Thomas Elworthy, 1895, John Murray, ch. VII
  3. Regional signals, from Manwatching, Desmond Morris, Manwatching (1977), as reproduced for reading practice, UEFAP (Using English for Academic Purposes), Regional signals
  4. Justice Scalia’s Under-the-Chin Gesture, Madeleine Brand with Roger Axtell, Day to Day, 30 March 2006, NPR, transcript
  5. What Does a “Thumbs Up” Mean in Iraq?, Brendan I. Koerner, Explainer, 28 March 2003, Slate, article
  6. Benign or Toxic? Differences in Emoji Interpretation by Gender, Generation, and Emoji Type, Marina Zhukova and Susan C. Herring, Language@Internet (in press, 2024), authors’ copy, Indiana University, results
  7. Understanding European Gestures, Rick Steves, read October 2026, Rick Steves’ Europe, Cheek Screw
  8. Wherever it came from, shaka sign part of Hawaii, June Watanabe, Kokua Line, 31 March 2002, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Kokua Line
  9. 🙏 Folded Hands emoji, Dictionary.com Emoji Dictionary, 28 February 2018, Dictionary.com, entry
  10. Leonard Nimoy reveals the secret origins of the Vulcan salute, MeTV, quoting Leonard Nimoy, I Am Not Spock (1977), MeTV, article

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research