With the hand held palm out and the thumb and middle fingers touching, it represents the letter d in the American Sign Language alphabet.

[4] Around age one, babies begin pointing to communicate relatively complex thoughts, including interest, desire, and information.

Non-human primates, lacking the ability to formulate ideas about what others are thinking, use pointing in much less complex ways.

In some cultures, particularly the Malays and Javanese[8] in Southeast Asia, pointing using the index finger is considered rude, hence the thumb is used instead.

[citation needed] In Arabic, the index or fore finger is called musabbiḥa (مُسَبِّحة), mostly used with the definite article: al-musabbiḥa (الْمُسَبِّحة).