Facepalm
A facepalm (sometimes also face-palm or face palm) is the physical gesture of placing one's hand flat across one's face or lowering one's face into one's hand or hands. The gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment, embarrassment,[1] shock, surprise or sarcasm.[2]
According to Macmillan Dictionary, the word "facepalm" first appeared around 2006,[1] though another source has an earliest citation of 2001.[3] The gesture itself is not of recent origin and, although common, is not culturally universal.[2] Images of stockbrokers facepalming have also been widely used in the media to convey the dismay associated with poor financial performance,[2][4] and a wide variety of regrettable film,[5] business,[6] and political[7][8] decisions have been described as facepalms or "facepalm moments". According to Oxford University Press lexicographer Susie Dent, this versatility is one of the reasons that the word has been linguistically "successful".[9]
This gesture is not unique to humans. A group of mandrills at the Colchester Zoo has adopted a similar gesture to signal the desire to avoid social interaction or to be left alone.[10]
Popular culture
An example of its use in popular culture is seen in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, where an image of Jean-Luc Picard expressing frustration using this gesture became famous,[11] making it into an internet meme.
See also
References
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Facepalms. |
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Maxwell, Kerry (4 Jul 2011). "facepalm". BuzzWord. Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Taylor, Kimberly Hayes (9 Aug 2011). "Stressed brokers can't keep their hands off their faces. Why?". The Body Odd. MSNBC. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ http://wordspy.com/words/facepalm.asp
- ↑ Kamer, Foster (5 Aug 2011). "Wall Street’s Facepalm Friday: World’s Front Pages Inevitably Feature Finance’s Great Faces of Agony". The New York Observer. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ Vaux, Rob (30 Jun 2011). "Biggest Transformers Face Palm Moments". Mania. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ Paczkowski, John (21 Nov 2011). "Double FacePalm: HP Blew Billions on webOS". All Things Digital. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ Rawlinson, Linnie (28 Apr 2010). "'Bigotgate' goes viral as UK PM says *facepalm*". UK Election Blog. CNN. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ Evans, Jon (30 Jul 2011). "Technology + Politics = Facepalm". TechCrunch. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
- ↑ Malik, Shiv (23 Nov 2011). "Lexicographers cram 'squeezed middle' into word of the year slot". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 Nov 2011.
- ↑ Laidre, M. E. (2011). "Meaningful Gesture in Monkeys? Investigating whether Mandrills Create Social Culture". In Brosnan, Sarah Frances. PLoS ONE 6 (2): e14610. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014610. PMC 3032724. PMID 21311591.
- ↑ Tom Chatfield (28 March 2013). Netymology: From Apps to Zombies: A Linguistic Celebration of the Digital World. Quercus Publishing. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-78087-994-9. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||