TheVulcan salute is ahand gesture popularized by the 1960s television seriesStar Trek. It consists of a raised hand with the palm forward and the thumb extended, while the fingers are parted between the middle andring finger. The gesture was devised byStar Trek actorLeonard Nimoy as a salute for the alienVulcan species, and is popular within thescience fiction fandom andnerd culture. The blessing phrase "live long and prosper" (written byTheodore Sturgeon) is frequently spoken alongside it.
The Vulcan "salute" first appeared in 1967 on theStar Trek second-season opening episode, "Amok Time", and was devised byLeonard Nimoy, who portrayed thehalf-Vulcan characterMr. Spock on the originalStar Trek television series.
A 1968New York Times interview described the gesture as a "double-fingered version ofChurchill'svictory sign". Nimoy said in that interview that he "decided that the Vulcans were a "hand-oriented" people".[1] In his 1975 autobiographyI Am Not Spock, Nimoy, who was Jewish, wrote that he based it on thepriestly blessing performed by JewishKohanim with both hands, thumb to thumb in this same position, representing theHebrew lettershin (ש), which has three upward strokes similar to the position of the thumb and fingers in the gesture. The letter Shin here stands forEl Shaddai, meaning "Almighty (God)", as well as forShekhinah andShalom. Nimoy wrote that when he was a child, his grandfather took him to anOrthodox synagogue, where he saw the blessing performed and was impressed by it.[2][3]
The gesture is known for being difficult for certain people to do properly without practice or the covert pre-positioning of the fingers. Actors on the original show reportedly had to position their fingers off-screen with the other hand before raising their hand into frame. This difficulty may stem from variations in individuals'manual dexterity. It is parodied in the 1996 motion pictureStar Trek: First Contact whenZefram Cochrane, upon meeting a Vulcan for the first time in human history, is unable to return the gesture and instead shakes the Vulcan's hand.
Others often greeted Nimoy with the Vulcan sign,[4] which became so well known that in June 2014 itsemoji character was added to the Unicode Standard inversion 7.0 asU+1F596 🖖RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS.[† 1][5]
United States PresidentBarack Obama referenced the Vulcan salutation in his statement on Nimoy's death, calling it "the universal sign for 'Live long and prosper'".[6] The following day,NASA astronautTerry W. Virts posted a photo on hisTwitter feed from theInternational Space Station showing the salutation (with the Earth in the background) as the ISS passed overBoston, Massachusetts, where Nimoy grew up.[† 2]
The accompanying spoken blessing, "live long and prosper", was also first used in "Amok Time" alongside the salute. The phrase was scripted byTheodore Sturgeon.[7] A Vulcan translation "dif-tor heh smusma" was introduced in the 1979 filmStar Trek: The Motion Picture.[citation needed] The less-well-known reply is "peace and long life", though it is sometimes said first, with "live long and prosper" as the reply. The phrase has been seen abbreviated "LLAP".[† 3][8][9]
In that episode, [Sturgeon] also wrote one of the series' standard catchphrases, the Vulcan greeting 'Live long and prosper.'
In the text, these references are preceded by "†":
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
Quotations from WikiquoteLeonard Nimoy on the Jewish provenance and cultural impact of the Vulcan salute
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