ILY sign

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The ILY is a sign from American Sign Language which, as a gesture, has moved into the mainstream. Seen primarily in the United States and other Americanized countries, the sign originated among deaf schoolchildren using American Sign Language to create a sign from a combination of the signs for the letters I, L, and Y (I Love You).^[1]

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The sign is an informal expression of any of several positive feelings, ranging from general esteem to love, for the recipient of the sign. A similar-looking but unrelated variation in which the thumb is toward the palm appears in heavy metal music culture as a "horns" hand-sign (though the thumbs extended version is sometimes used) and in college football as a sign of support for various teams including the University of Texas. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Ragin' Cajuns Athletics uses the ILY sign to symbolize the initials of the university (UL).