The high five is a hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand each, about head-high, and push, slide, or slap the flat of their palm against the flat palm of the other person. Its meaning varies with the context of use but can include as a greeting, congratulations, or celebration. The use of the phrase as a noun has been part of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1980 and as a verb since 1981.
About High five in brief
The high five is a hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand each, about head-high, and push, slide, or slap the flat of their palm against the flat palm of the other person. Its meaning varies with the context of use but can include as a greeting, congratulations, or celebration. There are many origin stories of the high five, but the two most documented candidates are Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers professional baseball team on October 2, 1977, and Wiley Brown and Derek Smith of the Louisville Cardinals men’s college basketball team during the 1978–1979 season. The use of the phrase as a noun has been part of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1980 and as a verb since 1981. The phrase is related to the slang \”give me five\” which is a request for some form of handshake – variations include ‘slap me five’ and ‘give me skin’ The high five originated from the low five, which has been a part of African-American culture since the 1920s. It’s probably impossible to know exactly when the low first transitioned to a high, but there are many theories about its inception.
Magic Johnson once suggested that he invented the highFive at Michigan State, presumably in the late 1970s. Others have suggested it originated in the women’s volleyball circuit of the 1960s. After retiring from baseball, Burke, who was one of the first openly gay professional athletes, used the high-five with other gay residents of the Castro district of San Francisco, where for many it became a symbol of gay pride and identification. For example, it can be seen in the Tokyo district of Roppongi, Japan, where residents earned the slogan ‘High Town Touch’ from the 1960 French Nouvelle movie ‘Breathless’ These earlier cases were never called ‘high fives’ because the term had not yet been coined and they lacked the cultural context and meaning of the gesture. For decades, the ‘conventional wisdom’ has been that the origin of the “high five” occurred in Dodger Stadium in October 1977, the last day of the regular season.
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This page is based on the article High five published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
