Hook 'em Horns is the slogan and hand signal of The University of Texas at Austin. Students and alumni of the university employ a greeting consisting of the phrase "Hook 'em" or "Hook 'em Horns" and also use the phrase as a parting good-bye or as the closing line in a letter or story.
The gesture is meant to approximate the shape of the head and horns of the UT mascot, the Texas longhorn Bevo. The sign is made by extending the index and pinky fingers while grasping the second and third fingers with the thumb. The arm is usually extended, but the sign can also be given with the arm bent at the elbow. The sign is often seen at sporting events, during the playing of the school song "The Eyes of Texas", and during the playing of the school fight song "Texas Fight". It is one of the most recognized hand signals of all American universities. A variant of the Horns, formed upside down with the thumb pointed outward, is often used by rivals of the Longhorns and is considered insulting, especially when performed by a player or coach of the team in question.
Read more about Hook 'em Horns: History, Identical Uses of The Gesture, Similar Uses For College Athletics, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words hook and/or horns:
“... with her shoulders as bare as a building,
with her thin foot and her thin toes,
with an old red hook in her mouth,
the mouth that kept bleeding
into the terrible fields of her soul . . .”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The moose will, perhaps, one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns ... to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)