Thumb signal
Carleton S. Coon, having observed Barbary apes in Gibraltar using the gesture, hypothesised in the anthropological classic The Story of Man that it is a mutual celebration of having opposable thumbs.
The Latin phrase pollice verso is used in the context of gladiatorial combat for a hand gesture used by Ancient Roman crowds to pass judgment on a defeated gladiator.
And the killers, spare or slay, and then go back to concessions for private privies.While it is clear that the thumb was involved, the precise type of gesture described by the phrase pollice verso and its meaning are unclear in the historical and literary record.
[9] Desmond Morris in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution traces the practice back to a medieval custom used to seal business transactions, suggesting that over time, the mere sight of an upraised thumb came to symbolize harmony and kind feelings.
[11] Popularization in the United States is generally attributed to the practices of World War II pilots, who used the thumbs up to communicate with ground crews before take-off.
This custom may have originated with the China-based Flying Tigers, who were among the first American flyers involved in World War II.
[citation needed] During World War II, pilots on US aircraft carriers adopted the thumbs-up gesture to alert the deck crew that they were ready to go and that the wheel chocks could be removed.
On modern US carriers, specific deck crew hold a thumb up to signal to the pilot and control tower that their station is OK for take-off.
[5] According to Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Brazilians adopted the thumbs up from watching American pilots based in northern Brazil during World War II.
[12] Senator John McCain of Arizona, when he cast the deciding vote that derailed a Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") on July 28, 2017, used the thumbs down gesture.
[13] In 2023, a farmer in Canada was fined C$82,000 (US$61,610), having used a thumbs-up emoji in response to a text message contract, which was ruled as a binding agreement.
[19] On the Internet, and most particularly on the social media site Facebook, the thumbs-up gesture is shown as an icon and is associated with the term "like"—which within that context means to follow or subscribe to the page, posts, or profile of another individual or company; and on YouTube, individual videos may be voted on positively or negatively by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons respectively (which in some previous versions of the site, used to be accompanied by "Like" and "Dislike" labels, and are still referred as such nowadays), and in the case of a thumbs-up, the video gets added to the user's "Liked videos" playlist.
[20] More recently, these gestures are associated with film reviews, having been popularized by critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert[21] on their televised review show Siskel & Ebert; the thumb up meaning a positive opinion of a film; the thumb down meaning a negative one.
[25] Unicode code points related to thumb signals include: Many keyboard emoticons utilize the shapes of lowercase "b" and "d" to represent a thumbs-up sign.
