High five

High five
A high five between two U.S. Navy officers

The high five is a celebratory hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand, about head high, and push, slide or slap the flat of their palm and hand against the palm and flat hand of their partner. The gesture is often preceded verbally by the phrase "Give me five" or "High five".

There are many origin stories of the high five,[1] but the two best documented candidates are Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team on Oct. 2, 1977, and/or Wiley Brown and Derek Smith of the Louisville Cardinals basketball team in 1978/79.[2]

In the United States, there is an initiative to celebrate the third Thursday of April as National High Five Day.[3]

Contents

Origin

The gesture probably originated in American professional sports. Picture of Drew Storen (right) and Wilson Ramos of the Washington Nationals (2011).

The use of the phrase as a noun has been part of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1980 and as a verb since 1981.[4] The gesture takes its name from the "five" fingers and the raising of the hand "high". This is opposed to the "low" five which has been a part of the African-American culture since at least World War II.[2] It's probably impossible to know exactly when the low first transitioned to a high, but there are many creation myths.[2] Magic Johnson once suggested that he invented the high five at Michigan State.[2] Others have suggested it originated in the women's volleyball circuit of the 1960s.[2]

Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker

For decades, conventional wisdom was that the first high five occurred between Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers on Oct. 2, 1977 in Dodger Stadium.[2]

It was the last day of the regular season, and Dodgers leftfielder Dusty Baker had just gone deep off the Astros' J.R. Richard. It was Baker's 30th home run, making the Dodgers the first team in history to have four sluggers -- Baker, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith -- with at least 30 homers each. It was a wild, triumphant moment and a good omen as the Dodgers headed to the playoffs. Burke, waiting on deck, thrust his hand enthusiastically over his head to greet his friend at the plate. Baker, not knowing what to do, smacked it. "His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back," says Baker, now 62 and managing the Reds. "So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do."[2]

After retiring from baseball, Burke, who was one of the first openly "out" homosexual professional athletes, used the high five with other homosexual residents of the Castro district of San Francisco, where for many it became a symbol of gay pride and identification.[2]

Louisville Cardinals

Another origin story places it at a University of Louisville Cardinals basketball practice during the 1978-79 season.[2] Forward Wiley Brown went to give a plain old low five to his teammate Derek Smith, but suddenly Smith looked Brown in the eye and said, "No. Up high." Brown thought, "yeah, why are we staying down low? We jump so high," raised his hand and the high five was supposedly born.[2] High fives can be seen in highlight reels of the 1978-79 Louisville team.[2] During a telecast of a 1980 game, announcer Al McGuire shouted: "Mr. Brown came to play! And they're giving him the high-five handshake. High five!"[2]

Conor Lastowka

Recently the Burke story was challenged by Lamont Sleets, who played basketball for Murray State University. He claimed to be the originator of the high five in the 1960s because his father's Vietnam buddies were called The Five and the young Sleets would jump up and slap their hands and say "Hi, Five!".[2] However the Sleets story was probably a hoax, a publicity stunt concocted by the founders of the "National High Five Day" (est. 2002)[5] - they needed a 'founder' and so invented the story and plugged in Sleets name.[2] "We just found the guy [Sleets] and made up a story," said Conor Lastowka, a founder of National High Five Day and professional comedy writer.[2]

Antecedents

Antecedents of the gesture exist. The physical gesture of slapping palms together predates 1970s America, for example it can be seen in the 1960 French Nouvelle vague movie Breathless at 1h14min23s when two men part ways. However these earlier cases are not called "high five's" because the term had not yet been coined, and they lack the cultural context and meaning surrounding a gesture that originated in America in the late 1970s and 1980s independent of usage elsewhere.

Variations

In addition to the standard high five, several types of "five" exist, and this factor adds variety to the experience, which tends to maximize the satisfaction of participants. The "low five" had already been known since at least the 1940s.[2] In the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, actor Al Jolson is seen performing the low five in celebration of the news of a Broadway audition. In African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) this was known as "giving skin" or "slapping skin".[citation needed]


If one initiates a high five (or any variation thereof) by offering a hand, and no reciprocal hand appears to consummate the gesture, the initiator is said to have been "left hanging". This could be interpreted as an insult, friendly joke or form of enlightenment, depending on the context of its use.

Another variation is Diamond Dallas Page's trademark, the "self high five" and popularized throughout the Pacific Northwest as a cultural trait of the area. The action consists of raising one hand, generally the right hand and tagging it with the other.[citation needed]

The Eiffel Tower is a variation where the people complete the high five after extending their arms as high in the air as possible. Occasionally the words Eiffel Tower itself are said. An example of this was in an episode of the sitcom The IT Crowd.

"Too slow"

The "too slow" variation is a sequence of high five + low five, often accompanied by a rhyme such as "Give me five. Up high. Down low.."[6] then, during the down low sequence, the initiator will surprise the counter-party by pulling their hand back at the last moment, thus tricking the other person to swipe empty air, completing the rhyme "Too slow!".[7] There are variations on this theme, with additions of "at the side" and other hand positions for the partner to contact the initiator's hand.[8] This game carries a risk for the initiator because if they pull back too slowly the counter-party will in fact be too fast, thus turning the tables and making the trickster the tricked, fooled at their own game. There is also the possibility the counter-party suspects a trick and will leave the initiators down low hanging and the gesture unresolved. An early use of "too slow" was captured by the New York Times in 1993.[6] Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled it on the son of a film-crew member while on the set of Last Action Hero, saying to the boy: "Let's have five. Five high. Five low,"[6] at which point Arnold pulled his hand away saying "Too slow." The boy reportedly laughed.[6]

Air five

Two people engaging in air five.

An air five is a variation where the hands of the participants never physically touch, needing only line of sight to make the gesture. It has an advantage for participants who are otherwise too far apart to achieve physical contact at the moment of the gesture.[9] The participants may simply pretend to high five, or add an imitation sound of hand slapping, similar to a physical high five, through mouth-noise or even by slapping the bottom of their forearms simultaneously.

References

  1. ^ Glenn Burke, The Guy Who Invented the High-Five - Outsports
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Jon Mooallem. "The history and mystery of the high five", ESPN, 29 July 2011
  3. ^ National High Five Day | Celebrate
  4. ^ High Five Me web site
  5. ^ National High Five Project
  6. ^ a b c d "ON THE SET WITH -- Arnold Schwarzenegger; Big Guy. Big Star. Big Deal, Baby.", BERNARD WEINRAUB, New York Times, March 4, 1993
  7. ^ Robison, Jim. "Handshakes Complicate Simple Greetings." Orlando Sentinel, 1985-09-15, p.6.
  8. ^ Elizabeth Tucker. Children's Folklore: A Handbook, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. Pg. 55
  9. ^ Torbjörn Lundmark. Tales of Hi and Bye: Greeting and Parting Rituals Around the World, Cambridge University Press, 2009. pg.73

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • High five — High five. High five ist eine besonders in den Vereinigten Staaten verbreitete Geste des Feierns, bei der zwei Personen jeweils eine Hand heben, um sie in die erhobene Hand des Gegenübers zu schlagen. Sie dient normalerweise dem Ausdruck… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • high-five — high′ five′ n. v. fived, fiv•ing 1) cvb a gesture of greeting, good fellowship, or triumph in which one person slaps the upraised palm of the hand against that of another 2) cvb to greet with a high five: The two players high fived each… …   From formal English to slang

  • high-five — ☆ high five [hī΄fīv′ ] Informal n. a slapping of the upraised, open hand of another person, as in congratulation or celebration: also high five vt. high fived, high fiving to slap the upraised hand of …   English World dictionary

  • high five — high fives also high five N COUNT If you give someone a high five, you put your hand up and hit their open hand with yours, especially after a victory or as a greeting …   English dictionary

  • High five — 1. See {Cinch} (the game). [Webster 1913 Suppl.] 2. pl. a celebratory or mutually congratulatory gesture between two persons performed by each slapping the other s raised right hand. Also used as a verb. [PJC] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • high-five — originally U.S. basketball slang, 1980 as a noun, 1981 as a verb, though the greeting itself seems to be older (e.g. Dick Shawn in The Producers, 1968). In reference to the five fingers of the hand …   Etymology dictionary

  • high five — n especially AmE the action of hitting someone s open hand with your own above your heads to show that you are pleased about something …   Dictionary of contemporary English

  • high five — noun count the action of holding your hand up and hitting your palm flat against that of another person, when you meet them or as a way of CONGRATULATING them …   Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

  • high five — ► NOUN ▪ a gesture of celebration or greeting in which two people slap each other s palms with their arms raised …   English terms dictionary

  • high five — I. noun : cinch III II. noun Etymology: from the five fingers of an outstretched hand : a slapping of upraised right hands by two people (as in celebration) • high five ˈ ̷ ̷ ¦ ̷ ̷ verb …   Useful english dictionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”