Fwd: frown

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

another re-send.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> Date: October 26, 2008 7:41:34 AM PDT
> To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: frown
>
>
> On Oct 26, 2008, at 3:20 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:
>
>> I don't have online access to the OED, but I have a copy of OED1,
>> and there
>> is no definition for frown that concerns the mouth specifically,
>> but as long
>> as I can remember (and much longer I'm sure) there has been the
>> idea of
>> turning a frown upside down (into a smile).
>
> OED2 (for noun and verb) mentions only brow action, and nothing with
> the mouth.
>
>> I think the OED should have this sense of a frown being an inverted
>> smile,
>> or [its] opposite.  When did this idea start?  Early Broadway?
>
> googling on {frown 'inverted smile"} gets a few interesting hits,
> including this passage from Gary Faigin's The Artist's Complete
> Guide to Facial Expression:
>
> The triangularis, when contracted, creates a mouth that is an
> inverted smile.  Everyone knows that if you take the curve of the
> mouth in the "have a nice day" face and turn it upside down, you get
> a frown, and the triangularis is one of the muscles responsible for
> creating that change.
>
> .....
>
> googling on {frown "upside down"} pulls in a large number of hits,
> mostly about turning frowns upside down.
>
> arnold
>

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