“At first glance, ASL-LEX resembles a flower patch as imagined by a pointillist painter.
But zoom in on the interactive website — created by a team led by Naomi Caselli, a lecturer on deaf studies at Boston University’s School of Education — and you can see that each of the nearly 1,000 dots represents a sign in American Sign Language. Ones that rely on similar hand shapes or movements are color-coordinated and linked together, which is why “bicycle” and “year” are neighbors. (Both involve moving fists in a circular motion.)”