talk to the hand

illustration for section: talk to the hand
talk to the hand or  {slang} talk to da hand  {v. phr.}  {informal}
('cause the face ain't listening)
(With outstretched vertical palm) Shut up — I've no interest in hearing what you've got to say.
Per the source, mentioned below, the idiom appeared along with some other short phrases in the USA in the 1990s.
Cite:
"It didn't cross the Atlantic right away and the first reference outside the USA is in a piece by Oliver Bennett in The Times, May 1998. In this he recounts a trip to San Francisco and explains some local idioms:
"A contemporary favourite, if you don't like what somebody is saying (a traffic warden, say) is to turn a palm forward and yell: 'Talk to the hand.'"
"It seems it wasn't a universal favourite in the USA by then. That same month the Syracuse Herald Journal (New York) reported a vox pop piece that offered the opinion:
I don't know about you, but if I hear someone say 'talk to the hand' again I will strangle them with their own shoelaces."
Categories: informal slang verb