Vulcan salute
The Vulcan salute was a hand gesture used by Vulcans. It involved holding the palm of one hand outwards while placing the fingers in a "V" shaped by separating the middle and ring fingers, while keeping the others together, with the thumb extended.

Usage 

The salute was part of both Vulcan greetings and farewells. The formal phrase associated with the salute in both cases was "Live long and prosper." (; ) 

When parties took their leave of each other, one party could use the phrase "Peace and long life" and would receive "Live long and prosper" as a reply. (; ; ) Alternately, each party could simply state to the other "Live long and prosper, (name)." (;  various episodes)

In the Vulcan language, "Live long and prosper" was pronounced "Dif-tor heh smusma." ()

In diplomatic situations, the greeting used was "I/We (depending on situation) come to serve," possibly prefaced by the statement of the initiators' name. The response was "Your service honors us." (; )

In 2151, a statuette of Surak performing the Vulcan salute with both hands was displayed aboard the Vahklas, a Vulcan ship. Unlike other Vulcan salutes, Surak's hands were not held upright. ()

In February 2152, Vulcan Ambassador V'Lar wished Sub-Commander T'Pol goodbye with the phrase "Live long and prosper." T'Pol, however, bowed in response. ()

Several Humans greeted Vulcans with the hand gesture, including Captain Jonathan Archer in 2154 () and Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 2368. () T'Pol taught Trip Tucker the salute when she took him to  to meet her mother, T'Les. () Zefram Cochrane tried and failed to perform it in 2063, during First Contact; he settled on a handshake instead. () Michael Burnham learned the salute from her brother, Spock, as a child. () When Leonard McCoy attempted to perform the salute, he said it hurt worse than having to wear his dress uniform. () The saying was quite well-known among those in Starfleet – in 2375, trapped in the  under layers of rock, two minutes before the air would run out, Tuvok told Tom Paris, "In accepting the inevitable, one finds peace," to which Paris responded that, if this was another Vulcan axiom, he would stick to "Live long and prosper." Fortunately, Paris had barely finished the sentence when he was interrupted by the sound of 's phaser drills breaking through the rock, and those on board the Delta Flyer were safely beamed back to the ship. ()

As a practical joke, Tom Paris and Harry Kim once reprogrammed Tuvok's security console so that it said, "Live long and prosper" whenever he accessed the internal sensors. They also reprogrammed his replicator the same way. ()

Ensigns Beckett Mariner and Bradward Boimler occasionally used the gesture as a sarcastic jest with each other, or with other people. This is done by performing the gesture, then swinging that arm up and down by the elbow.(, )

In 2383, Dal R'El mistook the gesure for a high five when a hologram of Spock saluted him after he took Kobayashi Maru test multiple times. ()

In 2258, in the alternate reality brought about by Nero's incursion, Ambassador Spock, after speaking with , made the hand gesture but said, "Good luck," as he felt it would be "oddly self-serving" to say the usual phrase to his younger counterpart. ()

In 2263 of the alternate reality, the Vulcan salute was exchanged between the  who was indigenous to that universe and a pair of Vulcan messengers who had brought him news that Ambassador Spock was dead. Spock used the salute to bid farewell to the Vulcan pair on Starbase Yorktown, both Spock and his Vulcan visitors saying "Live long and prosper" to each other before the messengers walked away. ()

In the mirror universe, the first Vulcan to step on Terran soil used the traditional greeting before being shot by , after he failed to duplicate the gesture. () Thereafter, in the mirror universe, it was not safe, even behind closed doors, for Vulcans to perform the Vulcan salute, for fear that they might be seen by a . ()

Appendices

Appearances
The Vulcan salute is seen in all the in-universe completed Star Trek TV shows except DS9. This list is in order of air date and is labeled as follows: if the salute is only said verbally without the hand gesture, then it is labeled as "only said"; if the hand gesture is only seen without the words, it is labeled as "only gestured"; and if the salute is both said and gestured, then it will appear normally with no label.
  (only gestured)
 (only said)
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 (only said)

 (only said)

 (only said)
 (only gestured)

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 (only gestured)

: 

 (only gestured)

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Background information

Origins
The Vulcan salute was devised by Leonard Nimoy, based on a gesture made by various Jewish denominations, including Orthodox and Conservative. In TV Land's The 100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catchphrases, William Shatner described the salute as a benediction, comparing it to the . The gesture actually forms the Hebrew letter "Shin" and represents the honorific title "Shaddai", which means "Almighty (God)." The hand gesture is traditionally used by the Kohanim (Hebrew "priests"), Jews of priestly descent, during a blessing ceremony performed during the prayer service of certain Jewish holy days. The Jewish blessing is done with both hands, with arms extended upward at roughly a forty-five-degree angle, rather than one hand held upright as in the Vulcan salute. Nimoy learned the gesture, which takes practice to do, from visiting his grandfather's synagogue as a child. In the video William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy: The Twenty-Five Year Mission, Nimoy stated, "It took me years of diligent practice and self-denial to be able to do that." 

The Vulcan salute wasn't originally in the script of , which called for Spock to walk up to T'Pau followed by them simply exchanging brief greetings. Leonard Nimoy thought this might be a good chance to bring something unique to the Vulcan people. When he spoke to the episode's director, Nimoy suggested – citing examples of other gestures conveying greetings, such as handshakes, salutes, and bows – that perhaps Vulcans would greet each other with the Jewish gesture he remembered from his childhood, and the director agreed to try it. However, the actress playing T'Pau, Celia Lovsky, initially couldn't perform the salute, presenting a problem for the production personnel. They solved it by using a simple camera trick where her hands were below camera frame while she used one of her hands to get the other hand in the proper position. The salute was established from then on. According to an interview with Leonard Nimoy, the line "live long and prosper" was written by Theodore Sturgeon (the author of "Amok Time").

Serialization
William Shatner was unable to do the Vulcan salute. When Kirk (as played by Shatner) performs the salute in , it appears that fishing line holds two of his fingers together. In the video William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy: The Twenty-Five Year Mission, Shatner joked that the reason he couldn't do it was because, in Leonard Nimoy's words, it took "years of diligent practice and self-denial." During a  appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Shatner demonstrated his inability to perform the salute, to which O'Brien responded with a perfect salute of his own.

As an in-joke, one of the gestures of the M-9 sign language is similar to the Vulcan salute. ()

The first Vulcan to fail to perform the salute on screen was Sarek in , being terminally ill.

In the writers' second draft script of , Sub-Commander T'Pol and Captain Vanik exchanged Vulcan salutes, unaccompanied by any of the traditional Vulcan greetings. However, they don't exchange the salute (and their initial meeting is not shown) in the final version of that episode.

In the script of the  film , the Vulcan salute was described as "legendary".

Influence and other usage
Armin Shimerman devised a Ferengi gesture inspired by the Vulcan hand salute. "I know that the Vulcan hand sign is universally recognized," he commented. "I thought, 'Let's see if we can find something like that to do." ()

Molly Hagan developed a Vorta greeting for Eris that was ultimately not used. She commented: "I immediately began working on a physical gesture that would indicate when I was using my telekinesis. I thought it could become the defining gesture of my people, like the Vulcan 'Live Long and proper' hand gesture. So, I came up with a motion where both my hands looked like they were taking energy in from my body before I pulsed it back out through my hands. It reminded me of something I saw Bruce Lee do.  It never got used because a) they had great special effects and didn’t need me to do any gestures to sell 'my powers' and b) they were concerned that any future Vorta may not be able to replicate it. I was beyond disappointed." 

The Filipino greeting "Mabuhay" can also be roughly translated as "live long and prosper" (it literally means "Live", but the expression is meant to convey a wish for someone to have a long and prosperous life in order to truly "live"). 

In Act 5, Scene 3, line 42, of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo says to Balthasar, "Live, and be prosperous, and farwell good fellow." 

It was proposed, accepted, and published in Version 7 of the Unicode Standard as Unicode Character U+1F596 (🖖 "RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS").  

A physician addressed a closed-door meeting of the US House Democratic caucus on 10 March 2020 where he "lightheartedly suggested" that people could employ the "live long and prosper sign" as a way to forgo handshakes and other physical forms of greeting during the outbreak of COVID-19.  

On a  episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Zachary Quinto was surprised to see that his maternal great-grandfather P.J. McArdle had used the phrase May it live long and prosper in a letter published in the Official Organ of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers in .

External links

 – a page by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, with photos and diagrams of how the salute forms the Hebrew letter Shin, the use of the Blessing Hands gesture on Jewish gravestones and jewelry, etc.
 shows a clear illustration of the Judaic origin of the Vulcan salute

de:Vulkanischer Gruß
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es:Saludo Vulcano
Salute
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