Thumbs down meaning

[canman]

Since when in Japan did the thumbs down meaning begin to mean "die"? Recently I've been teaching kids adjectives, such as long/short, big/small, clean/dirty, and when it comes to good/bad, I often use the thumbs up, or the thumbs down gesture. But recently kids have told me that their teachers at school told them it means "die", and they shouldn't use it. Anybody else come across this recently. Luckily for them facebook doesn't have a thumbs down icon or they would think people kept telling them to go die!

[Samurai_Jerk]

Isn't that Roman gladiator shit? Thumbs up he lives. Thumbs down he dies. They shouldn't be be using it though unless they're just messing around with their friends. It is pretty rude.

[wagyl]

This is the first I have heard of this, however there is web evidence from 2012 where it is taken for granted in a question that it means "die." It also appears in a list from 2013 of things you must not do in the US (along with not taking pharmaceuticals in or out of the US, not confirming the address and telephone number of the Japanese consulate, and never changing your Yen to USD in the US [!?] because it means "die" or "negative").

All I can think is that it is a literal interpretation of the origins of the gesture ... imagine Emperor Caligula in the Circus Maximus.
Ninja'ed by SJ while checking links.

[yanpa]

The legend of the origin of thumbs-up/thumbs-down I was told in my impressionable years in gaikoku was that it originated with some Roman Emperor who, when presiding over gladiatorial contests at the local ampitheatre would rate gladiatorial performance, with thumbs-down indicating displeasure and a very short remaining lifespan for the gladiator in question.

So in a very archaic meaning (if the story is true) it does imply death. I've never heard of someone thinking that meaning is valid though. Maybe some impressionable educator was watching a "documentary" which explained this legend, and took it rather literally? Either that or the Kunaicho is planning some new Olympic events?

(damn, great minds think alike)

[kurogane]

Stephen Fry of QI claims that the Roman meaning of thumbs down signalling death for a gladiator or circus performer is apocryphal and that the actual signal for death was thumbs up or a neutral tucked thumb which leads me to believe that the supposedly apocryphal story is actually true (given how dogmatically FOS QI is), but even if it is apocryphal for sure that is where that meaning comes from.

I would never make the connection between that use and using it to differentiate between good and bad

Here's some evidence for the idea that thumbs down as death is apocryphal

http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=1501

How did Roman Emperors order the death of a gladiator?

(FORFEIT: THUMBS DOWN)

Neither Roman spectators calling for the death of a gladiator, nor Roman Emperors authorising one, ever gave a thumbs down. They always gave a ‘thumbs up’.

ADDITONAL INFO
For a loser’s life to be spared the thumb was hidden inside the closed fist (as with a sheathed weapon)– if death was desired, the thumb was stuck up like a drawn sword. No Roman did ‘thumbs down’ in the way that we do for any reason, no matter what trashy movies like Gladiator may say.

The Latin phrase ‘pollice compresso favor judicabatur’ means “goodwill –or partiality, acclamation, applause– is decided by the thumb being kept in”. ‘Pollex compressus’ means ‘thumb tucked in’; ‘pollex infestus’ means ‘thumb hostile’. Infestus is Latin for ‘unsafe’, ‘dangerous’ or ‘inimical’.

s: ALD quoting Pliny, Horace, Juvenal et al.

Apparently this is the episode in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_2JeqT ... D&index=10

Sounds a touch too artfully Fryist/QI-ist Contrarian to convince me, but that was the QI argument anyways.

[Salty]

I had heard that the meaning is now reversed - originally up meant death. Here is a confirming link....

http://wordinfo.info/unit/3735/ip:1/il:K

[Salty]

Stephen Fry of QI claims that the Roman meaning of thumbs down signalling death for a gladiator or circus performer is apocryphal and that the actual signal for death was thumbs up or a neutral tucked thumb which leads me to believe that the supposedly apocryphal story is actually true (given how dogmatically FOS QI is), but even if it is apocryphal for sure that is where that meaning comes from.

I would never make the connection between that use and using it to differentiate between good and bad

Damn you`re good.......

[wagyl]

Of course this meaning of "die" is also a literal translation of 死ね, which is probably better expressed as "drop dead" or "fuck off."

[Grumpy Gramps]

Never heard of it. And often enough use it for yes/no, good/bad like/dislike etc stuff; nobody ever said a peep. Weird; must try harder

[kurogane]

I had heard that the meaning is now reversed - originally up meant death. Here is a confirming link....

http://wordinfo.info/unit/3735/ip:1/il:K

That's far more convincing. I love QI as TV but they have a very playfully loose relationship with The Truth.

[kurogane]

Of course this meaning of "die" is also a literal translation of 死ね, which is probably better expressed as "drop dead" or "fuck off."

Not the other way around? I betcha they borrowed it from the vernacular version of the Roman use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbs_si ... cient_Rome

Ancient Rome
Main article: Pollice verso
Pollice Verso (1872) by Jean-Léon Gérôme is one of the sources of the "thumbs down" gesture in popular culture.

The Latin phrase pollice verso is used in the context of gladiatorial combat for a hand gesture used by Ancient Roman crowds to pass judgment on a defeated gladiator. However, the precise type of gesture described by the phrase pollice verso and its meaning are unclear in the historical and literary record.[2][3][4]

In modern popular culture, it is assumed that "thumbs down" was the signal that a defeated gladiator should be condemned to death; "thumbs up", that he should be spared. The latter view was popularized by a widely reproduced painting by the 19th-century artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose Pollice Verso (usually known in English as "Thumbs Down") depicts a triumphant gladiator looking up into the stands for the verdict of the crowd.[citation needed]
"Now they give shows of their own. Thumbs up! Thumbs down! And the killers
Spare or slay, and then go back to concessions for private privies"
From Juvenal's "Against the City of Rome"(ca. 110-127 C.E.)

IOW..............viewtopic.php?f=21&t=30927&hilit=french

[Coligny]

Since when in Japan did the thumbs down meaning begin to mean "die"? Recently I've been teaching kids adjectives, such as long/short, big/small, clean/dirty, and when it comes to good/bad, I often use the thumbs up, or the thumbs down gesture. But recently kids have told me that their teachers at school told them it means "die", and they shouldn't use it. Anybody else come across this recently. Luckily for them facebook doesn't have a thumbs down icon or they would think people kept telling them to go die!

There might be a TV show to blame... (Hey not everybody can culturamated by the highness of Tom Clancy's buks)
Looking at the landscape I'd say game of throne... It's a semi random pick thought... Never made it past the intro.

[SovietSupreme]

SOLIDARITY AGAINST THE BOURGEOISIE DOGS OF JAPAN!

thumbs-down.jpg

[kurogane]

Why are his knuckles backwards?

[Coligny]

Why are his knuckles backwards?

You mean why is his left hand on his right arm ?

[Samurai_Jerk]

Why are his knuckles backwards?

Best Koreans are all deformed mutants. Or bad Photoshop job.

[chibaka]

The story I remember from school is that the thumbs up sign was given to the successful gladiator as an invitation to finish the job, therefore death to the other guy.
Thumbs down, spare him....... something like that.

[kurogane]

Why are his knuckles backwards?

You mean why is his left hand on his right arm ?

But we can't see his left hand in that picture, so we don't know if it is his left hand. I think SJ's hypothethith wins. Shocking inattention to detail, but rather appropriate considering.

[kurogane]

The story I remember from school is that the thumbs up sign was given to the successful gladiator as an invitation to finish the job, therefore death to the other guy.
Thumbs down, spare him....... something like that.

Interesting somebody of your advanced vintage ( ) heard that at school. Anyhoo, here is the root of all evil for that misunderstanding:




And the detail



Blame it on the French!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Except they may well have meant Spare Him, not Kill Him and it was misinterpreted............

[chibaka]

The story I remember from school is that the thumbs up sign was given to the successful gladiator as an invitation to finish the job, therefore death to the other guy.
Thumbs down, spare him....... something like that.

Interesting somebody of your advanced vintage ( ) heard that at school.

Did I mention it was gladiator school?

[canman]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I too was familiar with the Roman thumbs down for death idea, but that now seems to be in question. But I'm pretty sure that Coligny is right, that some stupid drama used the gesture, probably one of the countless high school/teen dramas they love to make here, and some tough guy gestured his thumb down and said something like 死ね, and it has now become taboo. Any suggestions what gesture i should use instead. A slashing motion across the neck would seem a little inappropriate.
On a side note, I've been away from FG too long, have to come back more regularly and keep up with all the news that isn't fit to print!

[kurogane]

Did I mention it was gladiator school?

ROFLus Maximus!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, though, good teachings. Not that anybody cared when I went but we were always taught it was thumbs down for death and it was only when I saw it on QI I ever thought about it; like I said, I assumed QI was FOS (as they so often are), but I was wrong. Then again, Lyndon Johnson was President when I started school.........wouldn't that be MacMillan or the other prehistoric guy for UK PM????? eeek

Canman,
I still think the Japanese notion of the gesture is distilled from our old understanding of the gesture. Maybe from 50s and 60s Sword and Sandals movies? They were really big in Japan. That link Wagyl showed above suggests the Japanese understanding is based on their understanding of the gesture in The Gaikoku (to be fair, the respondent did actually say the Anglosphere). At any rate.....yeah...............the knife across the neck gesture seems a touch violent...........no other ideas, though

[wagyl]

Any suggestions what gesture i should use instead.

Not a gesture unless you mime a halo and horns, and similarly western European culture based, but angels and devils? You can choose for yourself which one to symbolise good and which evil.
If you want to keep to more local gestures, there is ◯✗

[kurogane]

Yeah, vote one for Circle and Batsu. Nice and localised, pretty obvious, no danger of bad associations or implications like with the knife on neck or even this allegedly nasty meaning thumbs down............which is a stretch at best, but if they've already decided it does mean that it's too late now.

[chibaka]

So this means "die you fuckers"?

download.jpg

[canman]

BTW, the neck slicing gesture was a feeble attempt at humor. I think the batsu/maru, is a good idea.

[Buraku]

Russia gives von der Leyen, Kallas, Costa the thumbs down
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia- ... nio-costa/


That actor guy

I know people say he can't act but...

Could he have played a crazy fat bloated Roman Emperor?

Actor-turned-Putin sycophant Steven Seagal declares Ukraine 'was known for organ trafficking, child sex trafficking and Nazism'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... dship.html

[Coligny]

Actor-turned-Putin sycophant Steven Seagal declares Ukraine 'was known for organ trafficking, child sex trafficking and Nazism'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... dship.html

Well… he forgot the mailorder brides tbh…