According to the compiler, this concept list was first compiled and employed in 1978 for a comparative study of the LESCO and ASL sign languages. Since almost all sign languages denote body parts iconically, by pointing to them, the classical lists by Morris Swadesh, such as his Swadesh 1955 100, or his Swadesh 1952 200 turned out to be insufficient for comparative studies of sign languages. This list was published in many different references. We quote here the earliest version we could find (Woodward 1978 doesn't contain a full list). Later versions differ slightly in their label for 19, which is alternatively labeled as either «fat» (Woodward 1993) or «grease» (Woodward 2009).