Patting a Child's Head

In India, Sri Lanka and Thailand, patting a child on the head would be shocking and offensive because the head is believed to be the seat of the soul.

'V' for Victory

You think it means ''victory'' or ''peace.'' But that isn't all it means in England:

There, if the palm and fingers face inward, it means 'Up yours!' especially if executed with an upward jerk of the fingers.

There may be a connection between the two meanings that dates back 500 years, when the French used to cut off the middle finger and forefinger of the English archers they captured in battle:

After the battles of Agincourt and Crecy, so the story goes, where the French were heavily defeated by the expert English archers, the surviving French were marched off the battlefield to the taunts of the victorious English. The English added further insult to the French by holding up their hands, forefinger and middle finger stiffly upright, palms inward, to show both fingers fully intact.

The 'Hook 'Em 'Horns' Sign

The ''hook 'em 'Horns'' sign, two outside fingers with the pinky and index finger raised up and the middle two fingers folded down, may be beloved of fans of the University of Texas football team, the Longhorns, and it is a good luck gesture in Brazil and Venezuela. Upsidedown, it is used in American baseball to signify ''two outs.'' But in parts of Africa it is a curse. It is not much appreciated in Italy either:

For millions of Italians it is the cornuto, and it signifies an entirely different meaning. It says, ''You are being cuckolded.'' In more kindly terms, one person is signaling to the other that ''Your spouse is being unfaithful.''

Oh, Waiter!

Here the gesture for hailing a waiter is one arm halfway up in the air, sometimes with the index finger slightly raised. But in Japan that is rude. And in Germany it may bring more than you bargained for:

In places like Germany, the signal . . . means ''two,'' because two fingers (one finger and a thumb) are being held upright. So an American might be signaling in this fashion and then saying ''Waiter -- some water, please,'' and a German waiter would bring two glasses of water.

To order one glass, try the thumbs-up.

Finger Beckoning

In certain places, scratching the air, hissing and even making kissing noises may be preferable to using another common American gesture, curling the index finger in and out, to beckon a waiter:

In countries as widespread as Yugoslavia and Malaysia, that gesture is used only for calling animals. Therefore, using it to beckon a human would be terribly impolite.

In Indonesia and Australia, it is also used for beckoning ''ladies of the night.''

Tapping Head With Forefinger