OK hand sign 👌

How to read it

Unicode names the emoji 👌 OK HAND SIGN (U+1F44C). Roger Axtell, author of Gestures: The Do’s and Taboos of Body Language Around the World, told NPR in 2006 that 98 per cent of people in the United States recognise it, and that elsewhere it means something else. Desmond Morris, in Manwatching (1977), counted the Americans’ “OK Circle-sign” among the few gestures that spread across Europe and beyond, mostly during the Second World War.

Also searched as: 👌, A-OK sign, OK emoji, OK gesture, OK sign, OK sign in other countries.

What it means by country

Axtell told NPR the story of a hotel concierge in the south of France who took his OK as a complaint about the room, and of Richard Nixon, who got off his plane in Brazil in the 1950s flashing two OK signs, a picture that ran in newspapers across Brazil.

In the Gulf

Slate quoted a US Defense Language Institute manual in 2003: after the first Gulf War, people of the Arabian Peninsula adopted the OK sign, with the thumbs up, as a symbol of cooperation toward freedom.

Under water

For scuba divers it is the basic signal. PADI lists “Are you okay? / I’m okay.” first among its ten essential signals, made with the hand and answered with the same sign; at the surface, a diver signals OK by touching the top of the head.

Look-alikes

The pinched fingers of Italy bring all four fingertips to the thumb, not just the index finger, and ask a question rather than give approval.