← Kinesics — gestures

The Italian wrist flick: let's go

A hand flicked from the wrist toward the exit, sometimes with thumb and little finger extended: 'andiamo', let's go, hurry up. Ordinary in Italy, elsewhere the gesture reads as impatient dismissal.

Category : Kinesics — gesturesConfidence level : 3/5 (documented hypothesis)Identifier : e0064

Meaning

Target direction : Proposing departure or urging speed: 'andiamo' (let's go), 'andiamocene' (let's get out of here), 'sbrigati' (hurry up). A casual, complicit register with no hostility — the gesture accompanies or replaces speech.

Interpreted meaning : Outside Italy, the wrist flick toward the door reads as a shooing gesture: 'out', 'clear off'. In international meetings, the complicit invitation to leave can come across as a curt dismissal or condescending impatience.

Geography of misunderstanding

1. The gesture and its expected meaning

The andiamo wrist flick is recognised by its kinetics: the hand, relaxed or with thumb and little finger extended, is launched by a sharp rotation of the wrist toward the exit, once or several times. It accompanies or replaces the Italian formulas of departure: 'andiamo' (let's go), 'andiamocene' (let's get out of here), 'sbrigati' (hurry up). The register is casual and complicit — leaving together, hurrying a lingering friend. Its morphology clearly separates it from two neighbours: the mano a borsa (pinched fingers pointing upward, a gesture of interrogation, e0074) and the chin flick (indifference or defiance). Here it is the direction — toward the door, toward the outside — that carries the meaning of movement.

2. Where things go wrong: the geography of misunderstanding

In Italy the gesture is ordinary, cross-generational, and carries no hostility: it says movement, not rejection. Outside Italy, the same kinetics are captured by another lexicon: the backhand flick that drives away — 'shoo', 'clear off'. An Italian kindly proposing that foreign colleagues move to the table or leave may be perceived as dismissing them. The risk peaks in international professional meetings: the complicit invitation to wrap up becomes, to the untrained eye, a mark of condescending impatience. The misunderstanding remains low-gravity — irritation, ruffled feathers — but it is frequent, because the gesture slips out all the more easily as it is, on the Italian side, perfectly innocuous.

3. Historical genesis

The Italian gestures of departure belong to the Neapolitan repertoire documented as early as 1832 by Andrea de Jorio in La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano (Stamperia del Fibreno, Naples), a pioneering compendium translated and annotated by Adam Kendon as Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Indiana University Press, 2000). In the twentieth century, Bruno Munari's photographic repertoire, Supplemento al dizionario italiano (first edition Carpano, Turin, 1958; Corraini reprints), fixed the iconography of everyday Italian emblems with quadrilingual captions, and comparative gesture scholarship (Morris and colleagues 1979; Kendon 2004) established Italian gestures as illocutionary discourse markers. The earliest attestation of the lexicographic tradition — de Jorio 1832 — serves here as the datable boundary.

4. Famous documented incidents

No tier-1 intercultural incident is documented for this precise gesture: its low intensity confines it to private and professional frictions that go unreported. Its cultural visibility runs through fiction — post-war Italian cinema exported the gestures of departure and impatience — and through illustrated repertoires, from Munari to contemporary guides to Italian gestures.

5. Practical recommendations

In Italy, read the gesture for what it is: a proposal to leave, often affectionate. Outside Italy, neutralise it: say 'shall we go?' rather than flicking the wrist, especially with hierarchical interlocutors or clients. On the receiving end, do not conclude you are being dismissed without checking the smile, the direction of the gaze and the context. See also the mano a borsa (e0074), the Italian cornuto (e0008), the farewell wave vs the shooing gesture (e0089) and the palms-up shrug (e0068).

Historical origins

A departure gesture from the Neapolitan repertoire documented as early as 1832 by de Jorio (Stamperia del Fibreno), translated and annotated by Kendon (Indiana University Press, 2000). Iconography fixed by Munari, Supplemento al dizionario italiano (Carpano, 1958). Its status as an illocutionary marker was established by Kendon 2004.

Practical recommendations

Neutral alternatives

• Say 'andiamo?' or 'shall we go?' out loud
• Glance at your watch then the door with a smile
• Simply stand up first

Sources