Nearly everything we think we know about the thumbs-up gesture is wrong. Do you want to tell Siskel and Ebert or shall I?
Perhaps we should leave the task to linguistic anthropologist Joel Sherzer of the University of Texas, an expert on the thumbs-up sign, and especially its sociopolitical and psychological significance in Brazil. But before he offers a quick history lesson that may turn your world, or at least your thumb, upside down, let’s define our terms: when Sherzer says thumbs-up, he means extending the arm with the hand clenched and the short first digit vertically erect. (When Lavinia Stratton [1841-1919] said Thumb’s up, she meant her husband had arisen; she was married to 40-inch- tall circus performer Charles Stratton, also known as General Tom Thumb.) Note, too, the single-digit inflation: we say thumbs-up, plural, but almost always only a single one is used.
Though the stout little appendage performs many other vital tasks--as Heloise might have hinted, That thumb you use to pull out a plum is also dandy for sucking, pressing a remote control, pantomiming a phone receiver, or calling a runner out at third!--Sherzer isn’t as enchanted by them as by the familiar gesture we think we know.
