Cross your fingers Informal

To hope for good luck or a favorable outcome, often accompanied by physically crossing one’s middle finger over the index finger.

It’s used both literally, as an active gesture, and figuratively, as when someone says it about an outcome that’s now entirely out of their hands, like exam results or a job interview.

The gesture’s history is more contested than most people assume. One popular account traces it to pre-Christian Europe, where the crossing point of two lines was believed to trap good spirits or a wish in place until it came true, making a cross with two fingers a way of “pinning down” luck. A related theory ties it to early Christians, who allegedly used a two-person version — one person hooking a thumb and forefinger with another’s to form a cross — as a covert sign of faith when the religion was outlawed; over time this supposedly shrank into a single person crossing their own middle and index fingers to make an equivalent shape alone. Complicating both stories, some folklore historians argue there’s no clear evidence of the crossed-finger gesture in Europe before the nineteenth century, noting that earlier luck-related customs relied on crossed legs or a thumb tucked inside a closed fist instead. One well-documented use of the gesture survives from medieval and early modern courtrooms, where judges reportedly crossed their fingers behind their backs while pronouncing a death sentence, hoping to soften their own culpability before God.

I’m crossing my fingers that the weather stays nice for the wedding.

Cross your fingers — the results should be posted any minute now.

She crossed her fingers behind her back before opening the envelope.

A: “Do you think you got the job?” B: “I don’t know, but I’m crossing my fingers.”