What does the peace sign symbolize?

Answer 1

Actually the "Peace Symbol" was created by British philosopher Bertrand Russell in the early 1960's by combining two symaphore flag settings for the letters 'B' and 'N'. An upside down Y and a straight line.....The 'B' and the 'N' stood for Ban Nukes.

Answer 2

If you mean the circle with the lines in it, then it's hard to say exactly.

Its first appearance in public was in a march as the symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. They hired a man named Gerald Holton to design it for them, and he sold it on the basis of the symbol being a combination of semaphore signals for their initials.

Holton later came up with other reasons why it looked the way it did. And who knows? Maybe he originally designed it with something else in mind and just SOLD it to the CND with that song and dance about semaphore. If his later stories are to be believed, it represents a person standing with his hands outstreched, helpless and pleading.

Art, however, is not constrained by what it was INTENDED to be. Especially symbols. People look at that symbol and see all kinds of things in there, and I'd say that those meanings are just as valid for them. Some see airplanes, bird's feet, the anarchy symbol, and many other things.

Its origin is interesting, but what it is NOW is entirely up to you!

Answer 3

You can find a discussion of the history of the peace symbol on wikipedia.

Answer 4

A peace symbol is a representation or object that has come to symbolize peace. Several different symbols have been used throughout history, of which the dove, olive branch and the nuclear disarmament symbol are perhaps the best known.

The CND or Peace symbol

This forked symbol was adopted as its badge by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain, and originally, its use was confined to supporters of that organization. It was later generalised to become an icon of the 1960s anti-war movement, and was also adopted by the counterculture of the time. It was designed and completed February 21, 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a commercial designer and artist in Britain. He had been commissioned by the CND to design a symbol for use at an Easter march to Canterbury Cathedral in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in England.

The symbol itself is a combination of the semaphoric signals for the letters "N" and "D," standing for Nuclear Disarmament. In semaphore the letter "N" is formed by a person holding two flags in an upside-down "V," and the letter "D" is formed by holding one flag pointed straight up and the other pointed straight down. These two signals imposed over each other form the shape of the peace symbol. In the original design the lines widened at the edge of the circle.

A conscientious objector who had worked on a farm in Norfolk during the Second World War, Holtom later wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News, explaining the genesis of his idea in greater depth: "I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it." He also mentioned that he had intended its obvious resemblance to the anarchy symbol.

However, it is more commonly believed that Holtom merely put a circle around a symbol that appeared throughout the English countryside near airbases. That symbol was of a strategic bomber which could be seen on road signs indicating where the air fields were located. This is a much less creative and emotional explanation for the symbol.

The peace symbol flag first became known in the United States in 1958 when Albert Bigelow, a pacifist protester, sailed his small boat outfitted with the CND banner into the vicinity of a nuclear test. The peace symbol button was imported into the United States in 1960 by Philip Altbach, a freshman at the University of Chicago, who traveled to England to meet with British peace groups as a delegate from the Student Peace Union (SPU). Altbach purchased a bag of the "chickentrack" buttons while he was in England, and brought them back to Chicago, where he convinced SPU to reprint the button and adopt it as its symbol. Over the next four years, SPU reproduced and sold thousands of the buttons on college campuses.

Antagonism

The fact that the symbol resembles a bird foot in a circle gave rise to spurious alternative interpretations, ranging from plain mockery of "crow's foot" or "The Footprint of the American Chicken" (suggesting that peace activists were cowards) to a number of occult meanings, such as an upside down crucifix with the arms broken downward, suggesting the way that St. Peter was martyred. Others have claimed that the symbol resembles a medieval sign known as "Nero's Cross" that represents Satanism. Alternatively, some have suggested that the symbol is an inverted Elhaz rune, which would reverse the rune's meaning, according to the critics, from 'life' to 'death' (although the Elhaz rune is thought to mean elk[1]). As well, a commonly repeated conjecture during the 1960s was that it was an antichrist symbol: a representation Jesus on the cross upside-down. Gerald Holtom's explanation of the genesis of the symbol and his first drawings of it, however, do not support those interpretations.

Answer 5

Peace.

Answer 6

Allegedly, it is a stylized representation of the semaphore flag code for the letter "N" (two arms down at about the 4 and 8 o'clock positions, more or less), and the letter "D" (one arm straight up) superimposed on each other. These are the initials for "Nuclear Disarmament," and was adopted in the 1950's or so by anti-nuke types.

Answer 7

Originally it was meant to symbolize "v" for victory but then took on it present connotation of peace.

Answer 8

I'll take a stab in the dark, here. Peace? In the 40's it stood for victory.

Answer 9

...

I'm not making this up. A prominent Republican
once had a talk show, a local talk show.

This guy said if you turn the peace sign upside
down, then that is the representation of a broken
cross.

Medication time.


...

Answer 10

the hand signal does not symbolize peace at all, in fact its the exact opposite, two fingers stands for V which means victory in the battlefield, soory you peace-loving people but thats what it means according to Winston Churchill who made it up.