what is a frown

what the christ

when you tell a britisher to turn that frown upside down what do they think that means

you turn the top half of your head upside down

Something I do not do!

Where did those definitions come from? I think most Americans think of the upper half of the face as also being involved.

in the BrE version, does "bringing your eyebrows together" refer to middle-lowered lines of anger or middle-raised lines of sadness.

Hmm. Both definitions agree about down-turned corners of the mouth so strike that as a difference. "Concentration" and "thinking hard" amount to the same thing, so that, too. And "disapproval, displeasure" are damn close to "annoyed". That takes care of every element in the AmE definition closely matching up with an element in the BrE definition.

By my reckoning, that leaves the BrE adding knitted eyebrows, worry and sadness, as elements over and above the AmE usage. All we Americans have done is to simplify the overly complex BrE.

…what the fuck? Is what I’m feeling reading these tweets what the Mandela Effect people feel like all the time? pic.twitter.com/3z33QHrvWK

— Wesley Morgan (@wesleysmorgan) November 28, 2022

i don't think i'd call any of these frowns

no YOU live in a society. I live in the florence pugh frown cinematic universe pic.twitter.com/F41aNMgD31

— Florence Pugh Daily (@bestofpugh) January 7, 2022

They’re all frowns

Florence Pugh is a viking at frowning

☹️ frown

bring your eyebrows together so that there are lines on your face above your eyes

that's scowl territory

i did not know this either wtf

i must've learned the british version in books because to me the second definition was always the literary or old-fashioned one. now i know. it doesn't bother me that this word can describe two closely related facial expressions, it never has. people who whip themselves into a frenzy over stuff like this for yuks are the fucking worst (not caek)

I thought the first one was called a "pout."

i was just thinking that. i also realized that american frowning is really only for babies, emojis, and president barack obama. in my normal life i don't do really do it.

not sure how it is in UK, normally americans convey sense #2 with "furrow one's brow"

I want to say I learned this via a Lynne Murphy blog post (https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2016/09/frowns.html) but I forgot it until I saw that tweet last night.

What do Britishes think a “scowl” is? A quick google suggests there’s a man eyebrow/mouth divide there too.

tbf some of us also have trouble properly recognizing this facial expression, which is mainly about compression of the lips, not the shape of them

ASL vs BSL on "frown" https://t.co/U3ffD1BWiY, https://t.co/xQ79I8vYy5

— The Fruehwald (@JoFrhwld) September 13, 2016

A frown is 100% eyebrows. I have wrinkles between my brows by the end of every school year from frowning at students. Mouth turned down at the corners is a totally different expression imo, sort of a "Who knows, search me?" expression, like a shrug but with your face.

I'm aware that people use the words differently but I didn't realize it was a British/American thing, I just thought some people were inexplicably confused about frowning.

This is why I don’t bother looking at people’s faces when I talk to them nobody knows what this stuff means anyway

xp I think the difference between a frown and a scowl is partly intensity/aggression, partly how much of the face it involves. Like, you can frown in concentration, which is just furrowed brows and conveys no anger. But if you scowl - which I think of as outthrust chin, compressed lips, general pissed-off expression, with possible furrowed brows- you are specifically angry at someone.

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