Also called touch wood, knock wood, tahtaya vurmak
Knocking on wood, or touching wood in Britain, is a quick ritual done after praising your own luck or mentioning something you hope will continue, to keep from 'tempting fate'. Its origin is disputed: tree spirits and the Christian cross are popular theories, but folklorists find the custom recorded only from the 1800s.
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Take care: Harmless. It is a habit of humility, not a substitute for real precautions.
Folklorist Steve Roud argues the modern custom most likely comes from a chasing game called Tiggy Touchwood, in which a player touching wood was safe. He calls the tree-spirit theory nonsense.
Italians touch iron instead of wood, especially after a reminder of death such as a hearse passing.
Turks knock on wood three times, often pulling an earlobe as well, after hearing bad news or a compliment that might attract the evil eye.
Popular books often say knocking on wood began with Celtic or Germanic belief in spirits living in trees, either waking them for protection or keeping them from overhearing boasts. Others link it to the wooden cross of Christ. Neither theory has early evidence. Folklorists Steve Roud and Jacqueline Simpson, in A Dictionary of English Folklore (2000), note that 'touch wood' is not recorded until the 19th century, and they consider claims of pagan roots unfounded.
Roud points instead to Tiggy Touchwood, a 19th-century game of tag in which touching wood made you safe, and suggests adults borrowed the idea of wood as a safe base. In America the phrase shifted to 'knock on wood' by the early 20th century. Similar habits exist in Turkey, Iran, Sweden and elsewhere, while Italians touch iron, a reminder that many cultures share the urge to guard good fortune.
A dried acorn, or an acorn-shaped pull on a window blind, kept to guard a house from lightning and to bring steady luck and long life. It draws on the old tie between the oak and the thunder god.
A blue glass eye bead hung in the home or worn on the body so that envious or admiring looks are caught and reflected before they can do harm.
Crossing the middle finger over the index finger is a gesture to wish for luck or ward off bad luck. Its origin is unknown; the popular stories about early Christians or pagan wishing are unproven, and the gesture is only well documented from the 18th and 19th centuries.
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