sign
Noun pluralsigns
Pluralsigns
- 1To write one's signature on a document, register, or other item, to make it valid, agree to it, or identify oneself.
The two presidents will sign the treaty at a ceremony next week.
The director signed the contract, making the deal binding.
UsageYou sign a form or sign your name. The name you write is your signature (not
incorrect: sign). - 2A clearly visible, usually flat object bearing a short message in words or pictures.
The shop hung a new sign above its front door.
Road signs along the highway guide travelers to the right exit.
UsageOften with the topic first: road sign, stop sign. A sign says something: the sign says Exit.
- 3A visible fact showing that something exists or is likely to happen.
A faint tremor can be an early sign of a larger earthquake.
Investigators searched for any sign of forced entry.
UsageOften a sign of something or a sign that + clause. No sign of and little sign of are common.
Similarindication, evidence, signal
- 4To commit by contract to play for a sports team, record for a label, or the like; of a team or label, to take someone on under such a contract.
Several free agents sign with new teams every offseason.
The band finally signed with an independent label.
UsageA player signs with or signs for a team; turned around, the club signs the player.
- 5A mark or symbol used to represent something else.
In math, the equals sign shows that two amounts are the same.
Each currency has its own sign, such as the dollar sign.
UsageOften the second part of a compound: dollar sign, plus sign, peace sign.
Note
Here the word names the symbol itself, and it often travels as the second half of a compound: the sharp sign in music, the thumbs-up sign, the dollar sign. The symbol need not be written at all. A gesture counts, and so can a sound, as when a train whistle or a distant thunderclap is called an auditory sign. Mark and symbol are its nearest synonyms, though neither stretches as easily to a sound.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- A gesture can function as a sign. en.wikipedia.org
- Sounds can function as signs. en.wikipedia.org
- A train whistle can function as an auditory sign. symsys.stanford.edu
- Thunder can function as a sign. en.wikipedia.org
- 6
- 7One of the twelve divisions of the zodiac, associated with a person's date of birth.
He reads the horoscope for his sign every morning.
The two friends share the same astrological sign.
UsageAsk What's your sign? A possible answer is I'm a Gemini.
Note
Astrology divides the zodiac into twelve sectors, each named for a constellation.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The astrological zodiac is divided into twelve sectors. en.wikipedia.org
- Each zodiac sign is named after a constellation. en.wikipedia.org
- 8A bodily property that points to a disease and, unlike a symptom, can be observed objectively by someone other than the patient.
Like a reading on a gauge that anyone can check, not a private feeling only the patient has.
Small white spots inside the cheeks are an early sign of measles that doctors look for.
Yellow skin is a recognized sign of liver trouble.
Similarindication, evidence
Note
Medicine draws a firm line here. A sign is what an examiner can find by looking, feeling or measuring. A symptom is what the patient reports: the doctor finds the one, and the patient feels the other. The split is objective against subjective. Everyday speech blurs the two words, but clinical writing does not treat them as interchangeable.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- Medicine distinguishes objectively observable signs from symptoms experienced and reported by the patient. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- 9A gesture or motion of the body used to pass a message to another person.
The catcher flashed a sign to the pitcher before every throw.
She caught the waiter's eye and made the sign for the check.
Note
Two constructions do most of the work. A sign to do something passes on an instruction (she gave me a sign to keep quiet), while the sign for something names what the gesture stands for (the sign for the check). Give, make and flash are its usual verbs. This is the everyday, improvised gesture; a unit of sign language belongs to a full language with its own vocabulary.
Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Sign languages are full languages with their own vocabularies. en.wikipedia.org
Less common meanings
- 10To communicate using sign language.
Many hearing children of deaf parents sign fluently.
She signed throughout the entire presentation.
- 11A language of hand movements and facial expressions used instead of speech, known as sign language, or a single gesture in it that stands for a word or idea.
Their whole family converses in sign at the dinner table.
She interprets between spoken English and sign.
UsageUsed without a: talk in sign, know sign. A single gesture is a sign.
Note
This is the clipped, uncountable name for sign language as a whole.
- 12To communicate something to someone with a gesture or signal.
Lifeguards sign to swimmers when the water gets rough.
With a flick of his flashlight, the usher signed for us to follow.
UsageSign to someone, often for them to do something: he signed for me to come closer.
Similarsignal, gesture, motion
Note
Walter Scott writes "I signed to Brown to make his retreat" in Guy Mannering (1815). The same message can drop the to and take a clause, as in he signed me that I should follow, an older transitive pattern. No sign language is needed; any gesture will do.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Walter Scott wrote the quoted words in Guy Mannering; the fictional writer is Julia Mannering. gutenberg.org
- Guy Mannering was first published in 1815. walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk
- The transitive gesture construction has historical precedent. en.wiktionary.org
- 13In computing, to add a cryptographic digital signature to software, a file, or a message, which proves its source and shows it has not been changed.
Each update is signed with the company's private key before it is released to users.
Sign the installer with your code-signing certificate so that users don't see a security warning.
Note
Signing and encrypting are easy to confuse, but signing hides nothing. A signed file or message stays readable; the signature lets anyone holding the matching public key check who issued it and that it has not been altered. For programs the practice has its own name, code signing, and its usual objects are apps, updates and installers.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- Signing itself does not conceal the signed content. csrc.nist.gov
- The corresponding public key is used to verify a digital signature. gnupg.org
- Digital signatures authenticate the signer and detect changes to signed data. nist.gov
- Signing software is called code signing. learn.microsoft.com
- Apps and installers are common objects of signing. learn.microsoft.com
- Software updates are objects of code signing. images.apple.com
- 14The positive or negative property of a number, indicated by a plus or minus mark.
Like the marker on a thermometer showing whether you're above or below zero.
When you multiply two negatives, the sign of the result is positive.
If you change the sign of seven, you get negative seven.
Note
Mathematics splits a number into two parts: how big it is, and which side of zero it lies on. The sign is the second part and the magnitude the first, and each can be right or wrong on its own. You can get the magnitude right and the sign wrong. Zero is usually treated as having no sign. The verb to work out the sign grows from this sense.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- A real number can be described by its magnitude and sign. en.wikipedia.org
- Magnitude and sign can be correct or incorrect independently; opposite nonzero numbers have equal magnitudes. fsw01.bcc.cuny.edu
- Zero is conventionally treated as having no positive or negative sign. en.wikipedia.org
- The mathematical verb refers to determining whether a quantity has a positive or negative sign. en.wiktionary.org
- 15
- 16Physical evidence, such as tracks or droppings, left behind by an animal.
Like clues left at a scene: prints and leavings that quietly report who passed and when.
Trackers read the sign on the forest floor to learn which animals had passed.
The guide pointed out fresh sign near the riverbank, where elk had come to drink.
UsageOften after an animal's name or fresh: deer sign, fresh sign.
Note
A tracker's mass noun, used in the US, Canada and Australia. Anything an animal leaves behind counts. Dave Canterbury's Advanced Bushcraft (2015) states the practical rule plainly: only trap where there is sign.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Dave Canterbury wrote Advanced Bushcraft, published in 2015. simonandschuster.com
- Advanced Bushcraft advises trapping only where animal sign is present; the wording matches the cited passage on page 127. en.wiktionary.org
- 17
- 18A unit that conveys meaning or information, such as a word; in linguistics, a pairing of a perceptible form and the concept it stands for.
Like a coin: one side is the shape you see, the other the value it stands for.
In language, each sign links a sound or written form to a concept in our minds.
A flag can act as a sign, carrying meaning far beyond its cloth and color.
Similarsymbol
Note
In linguistics and semiotics this is a technical term: a perceptible form paired with the concept it stands for. In Saussure's account, that pairing is arbitrary. Older grammars used the word more loosely. A 1692 Latin grammar calls a and the "the sign" a noun may take. A 2008 volume of essays honoring Eero Tarasti notes that such small words are still signs, even when they point to no apparent object.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- A sign can technically consist of a form paired with a concept or meaning. en.wikipedia.org
- Saussure regarded the relationship between signifier and signified as arbitrary. openlab.citytech.cuny.edu
- Older grammars used sign for grammatical indicators such as articles. tile.loc.gov
- The cited grammatical passage calls a or the a sign that may precede a substantive. en.wiktionary.org
- 19To make the sign of the cross over oneself or over someone or something, as a blessing.
Like a quick personal ritual made on oneself to invoke protection.
The old woman signed herself three times before the altar.
Devout travelers would sign themselves whenever they passed a roadside shrine.
Similarcross
- 20To set an identifying mark or seal upon a document or similar item.
Note
An early branch of the verb. Latin signāre meant to mark, seal, indicate and signify, and English inherited it through Old English seġnian and Anglo-Norman seigner. Sealing a letter with a signet is now archaic. Writing one's name took over as validating with a signature. Keep this sense for historical writing about charters and seals.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- It is an early branch. The ancestral Old English verb already meant making the sign of the cross, blessing or consecrating. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin signāre meant to mark, seal, indicate and signify. en.wiktionary.org
- English sign derives partly from Old English seġnian and partly from Anglo-Norman seigner. en.wiktionary.org
- Signatures supplanted seals as the usual means of validating documents. research.aber.ac.uk
- 21To determine whether a quantity is positive or negative.
- 22An emblem of a military force, carried aloft on a flag or standard.
The great Ensign of Messiah blaz'd Aloft by Angels born, his Sign in Heav'n.
1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost
Showing meanings only.
More uses
Practice
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Origins
Latin signum ("a mark, sign, token"), whose deeper origin is uncertain, gave both Old English seġn, meaning "sign, mark, token," and Old French signe or seing, meaning "sign, mark, signature," and the two fed into Middle English. The English word is a doublet of signum.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Latin signum meant a mark, sign, or token. en.wiktionary.org
- The deeper origin of Latin signum is uncertain. en.wiktionary.org
- Old English seġn came from Latin signum and meant sign, mark, or token. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French signe or seing came from Latin signum and had the stated meanings. en.wiktionary.org
- Both the Old English and Old French words contributed to Middle English sign. en.wiktionary.org
- English sign and English signum are doublets. en.wiktionary.org
Latin signum ("a mark, sign") produced the verb signāre ("to mark, seal, indicate, signify"). Middle English signen drew partly on Anglo-Norman seigner and Old French signer and partly on Old English seġnian ("to mark, sign"), all of which come from that Latin verb.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Latin signum means a mark or sign. en.wiktionary.org
- The Latin verb signāre derives from signum. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin signāre means to mark, seal, indicate or signify. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English signen derives partly from Anglo-Norman seigner and Old French signer and partly from Old English seġnian, meaning to mark or sign; these ultimately derive from Latin signāre. en.wiktionary.org