Bodily Oddities

Gorlin's sign

Also called: Gorlin sign · Touching your nose with your tongue

Touching the tip of your nose with your tongue. About 10% of people can do it. About half of people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can, so doctors use it as a quick check for stretchy connective tissue.

Mouth and throat Whole body Trick Voluntary
Try it Party trick Genetic

How common

~10% of people Common · 10–50% About 50% of people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can do it.

Can you do this?

These are answers from visitors, not a study.

How it works

Gorlin’s sign is the ability to touch the tip of your nose with the tip of your tongue. Doctors call it a sign because it hints at something else. It is named after Robert Gorlin, an American oral pathologist3.

Whether you can do it depends on four things. The length of your tongue. The length of the band under your tongue, the frenulum, which limits how far the tip can reach. The distance from your upper lip to your nose. And how stretchy the tissues of your lip and face are.

About 10% of the general population can do it1. In people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, the figure is about 50%1. Ehlers-Danlos is a group of inherited conditions where collagen, the protein that gives tissue its strength, is weaker or more elastic than usual2. Skin stretches further. Joints bend further. The tongue and lip reach further too.

Being able to touch your nose does not mean you have a connective tissue disorder. Most people who can do it are simply built that way. Doctors use the sign as one small clue among many, alongside checks like bending the thumb back to the forearm2.

Try it

  1. Stick your tongue out as far as it goes.
  2. Curl the tip upward toward your nose.
  3. Push your lower jaw forward a little. This brings the tongue closer.
  4. If the tip touches the nose, you have the sign. If it stops a few millimetres short, you are in the majority.

You cannot train this one. Tongue length and frenulum length do not change with practice.

Sources and further material

  1. Encyclopedia Gorlin sign Prevalence in the general population and in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
  2. Encyclopedia Ehlers–Danlos syndromes The group of connective tissue disorders the sign is linked to.
  3. Encyclopedia Robert J. Gorlin The American oral pathologist the sign is named after.
Mouth Trick

Pointed tongue

Making the tip of the tongue narrow and sharp, like a pencil point. About 55% of people can do it. After rolling, it is the most common tongue trick.

~55%
Bones Variation

Joint hypermobility

About 1 in 5 people have joints that bend further than usual, measured with a nine-point test called the Beighton score. For most people it causes no trouble.

10–25% of people
Mouth Trick

Tongue rolling

Between 65% and 84% of people can curl the sides of the tongue up into a tube. For decades it was taught as a simple one-gene trait. It is not.

65–84% of people
Bones Variation

Hitchhiker's thumb

A thumb whose top joint bends back past 50 degrees, once taught as a simple recessive gene. Thumb angle is really a smooth range, and the genetics are not that simple.

24–36% of people