Upthumb

A gesture used when hitch-hiking to hale a lift, or by a Roman Emperor to deign that someone should not be executed, or more generally used to signify agreement or a positive emotion.

Hands are weird it must be said.¹ They don’t actually say anything, but what we do with them can wield results in the world of communication. Obviously we subconsciously flap them about while we speak, more vigorously if Italian or shouting expletives while conducting an orchestra, and generally they help keep people from realising that a conversation is just staring at someone’s mouth or eyes and waiting for your turn to say the words buzzing in your head lest they be forgotten and melt away.²

Some gestures we perform with our hands can cause offence. I’m thinking specifically of the raised “middle finger” (sigh) which often is used to mean “go away”, or “get out of my way” and can simply mean “I’m too insecure to acknowledge that it is my driving which is at fault - but regardless, fuck you”. Historically, this gesture is meaningless, and it is instead the single raised index finger which would point rudely at someone, show disdain to someone in authority or even dispute exactly whose Donkey was at fault in a road incident. History moves in cycles, but the raised single finger has always meant disrespect - it has just changed from culture to culture exactly which finger is the one that has the impact and conveys the meaning. Mesopotamians, for example, would raise what we call the ring finger in an act of defiance, but as part of this finger carousel would instead have their wedding ring on their wrist (they had much smaller wrists back then). I’ve even heard that royal families often encourage their children to use what we refer to as the ‘pinky’ to convey their displeasure, often while drinking tea, in order that their child can never be pictured making an abusive gesture and thus bring their incestual, reptilian family into disrepute.

Other gestures have more gentle meanings, but remain confusing. Rubbing ones thumb together with your two forefingers does in some cultures depict “loadsa money”, even though we live in a cashless society and the notes and/or coins that history tells us were once used for commerce, were not themselves ever rubbed like that anyway. Similarly, one can hold the thumb and forefingers tips together in a circle, much like you would when pretending to make a hole to look through say when spying on a flatmate through a wall, and then splay the other fingers out into a staggered concerto of curves to convey “okay” (as in, “that’s fine”) or else half a rabbit (less useful).

Upthumbing has been found to be a useful sexual technique, but the less said about this the better. More prominent in its use came when the internet started to use a basic pictorial lexicon to allow users to emotionally respond to some piece of content without having to meaningfully express an opinion through words. The humble upthumb took on a new meaning when it became the primary gesture of support online, to ‘like’ something. You can also use an upthumb emoji (as they are called) as part of a similee construction, e.g. “She had a face 👍 a flat plate” or “His train flew past him 👍 an eagle made of train”

Footnotes