What is the origin of the hitchhiker's thumb?

May 24, 2006 11:33 AM

What is the origin of the hitchhiking gesture?

Just to be specific, I'm talking about holding your arm out with fingers folded and thumb extended. How did this gesture become commonly known as a request for a ride?

posted by jedicus to travel & transportation (11 comments total)

Note that the thumb was used by Clark Gable in a scene in It Happened One Night (1934).
posted by mcwetboy at 11:41 AM on May 24, 2006

Huh. Apparently, the thumb-thing is region-specific:

Most places have some regionally-dependent method by which a hitchhiker signals to passing drivers that they are looking for a ride. In many parts of the world, including North America, hitchhikers traditionally stretch out one arm and stick out their thumb pointing up. In South Africa, a hitchhiker may show an oncoming car the back of his hand with the index finger raised, rather than the thumb. In Poland, the hand is held flat, and waved. In India, the hand is waved with the palm facing downwards. In Israel, the sign is a stretched forefinger pointed toward the road.
posted by interrobang at 11:42 AM on May 24, 2006

Cool find, interrobang. I must be guilty of ethnocentricity, because our gesture seems much more distinctive and evocative to me.
posted by agropyron at 12:08 PM on May 24, 2006

Around Baltimore, if you want a passing driver to give you a lift, you hold out your arm with the palm down, and wave your hand towards you at the wrist. I see people doing this two or three times a day, but only recently learned what it meant.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:16 PM on May 24, 2006

It's called hailing a hack in Baltimore (I see it much more often than that, but I live in the city and work really in the city). You pay for the ride, though, a negotiated price you set with the driver. So it's a bit different than hitchhiking, but very distinctive and omnipresent.
posted by OmieWise at 12:19 PM on May 24, 2006

In Dubai I noticed that it was frequently a palm facing down with the hand moving up and down... (sort of a "slow down" sort of motion).
posted by cadastral at 12:21 PM on May 24, 2006

The earliest reference to the thumb being used in hitchhiking that I was able to find on this site was from The London Times February 23rd 1940:

But the hitch-hiker who travels free by road is always above-board. His face and his beseeching thumb are his fortune, and he moves erratically in other people's cars across the great American Continent.

That site lists the earliest reference to hitchhiking (though not the word hitchhiking) in print to be a letter from an American poet named Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, written in 1912, which stated:

When the weather is good, touring automobiles whiz past. They have pennants showing they are from Kansas City, Emporia, New York or Chicago. They have camping canvas and bedding on the back seats of the car, or strapped in the rear. They are on camping tours to Colorado Springs and the like pleasure places. Some few avow they are going to the coast. About five o'clock in the evening some man making a local trip is apt to come along alone. He it is that wants the other side of the machine weighed down. He it is that will offer me a ride and spin me along from five to twenty-five miles before supper. This delightful use that may be made of an automobile in rounding out a day's walk has had something to do with mending my prejudice against it, despite the grand airs of the tourists that whirl by at midday. I still maintain that the auto is a carnal institution, to be shunned by the truly spiritual, but there are times when I, for one, get tired of being spiritual.

Not an answer to your question, but interesting. I also like this description of hitchhiking from The Nation November 7, 1923:

HITCH-HIKING is no thoughtless expression of the untrammeled pioneer, but one of the most desolate of the exact sciences. From the point of view of the dull motorist it may have an element of adventure. Even the girls who sleep at the "Y" must be exciting to those victims of civilisation, like yourself, who know only the type that ride in automobiles and sleep in hotels. But from the point of view of the pedestrian all automobilists fall into dead categories. There is no use hailing a car with two young folks of opposite sexes on the front seat, even though there be five unoccupied places in the rear. There is no use trying to stop a driver who wears goggles; they are all flinty-hearted. A lone man hiker need never trouble to hail a car with only men inside and a lone girl hiker wastes time in appealing to women. It takes a quick eye to a appraise a car and its occupants before it has passed forever - whether one had best appeal to the driver or to the woman (or in these days man) beside him or her, how much room there is behind, and whether one had best ask a lift only to the next village or admit that one has fifty miles to go. Like all sciences it seems fascinating to the amateur. but it becomes dull and disappointing after a little experience. The automobilists are so uninteresting.

People wearing goggles are flinty-hearted. You heard it hear first folks.
posted by ND¢ at 12:52 PM on May 24, 2006

On my drive into work I often pass an elderly lady standing at the edge of her yard at the side of the road, hunched over and wearing multiple layers of colorful draping clothing. As I drive by, she points a crooked index finger directly at me and follows my passing with her hand, pointing the whole time.

For months I assumed she was just hexing me, but then one day I saw her at a different place further down the road with her husband. She did her usual pointing thing as I drove by, but her husband did the arm out and thumb up thing. Only then did I realize she'd been asking for a ride all this time.

Sorry, doesn't answer the question, but I like to tell the story.
posted by ewagoner at 12:54 PM on May 24, 2006

Worth noting that one reason the raised thumb wouldn't be universal is that in some countries it's the equivalent of flipping the bird, or the british v-sign.

So in some countries, let's say Greece, you'd be the guy by the roadside making the "fuck you" sign. Good luck with that.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:53 PM on May 24, 2006

Two women give the hitch hiking thumb to Michel in Breathless
posted by Packy_1962 at 3:47 PM on May 24, 2006

The way I usually see it done is by someone walking along the roadside, with a hand extended to the side (not parallel to the road surface, but hanging down a bit), index finger extended and pointing out towards the road.
posted by tomble at 5:09 PM on May 24, 2006