![]() ![]() In the intervening years, the thumbs-up gesture was mostly mentioned in reference to the Latin. So how did the meaning get swapped around? In antiquity, says Corbeill, “the thumb was hostile in the same way the middle finger was hostile, and it was a threat, just like it is now.” There’s a poem that describes a crowd gesturing towards a gladiator with an unfriendly or hostile thumb, and then the same phrase is used in other contexts where it clearly means the upturned thumb. “‘Turning the thumb’ is turning the thumb up ,” he says, “and you’ve got the ‘up’ gesture.”Īnother reason we know the thumbs-up was the kill signal was a gesture known as the infestus pollex or hostile thumb, which is mentioned in texts but, again, isn’t pictured. “This is the reason often historians have thought of the thumb turned down,” Corbeille says, but there’s evidence that the turn would have gone in the other direction.įor example, the word for turning also means turning a limb in question on the joint, but doing the modern thumbs-down gesture involves turning the wrist, not the thumb. Two textual descriptions of a gladiatorial battle, from the poets Juvenal and Prudentius, both reference the pollice verso or pollice converso, the “turned” thumb, as the signal for death. He’s got a fist with his thumb pressing down on it.” “And right underneath, one of the referees is pressing his thumb. There’s two referees around them breaking up the battle and up above it says, in Latin, STANTES MISSI, which means ‘let the men who are still standing be released,'” he says. “What’s great about these is that they often have text accompanying them, so what you see very clearly is two gladiators fighting to a standstill. “A thumb can press or be pressed, it works both ways.”Ĭorbeill located an example of what exactly the gesture might look in Nîmes, in southern France, when he found an appliqué medallion that shows a scene from a gladiatorial battle. “The verb premere in latin is just as ambiguous as ‘press’ in English,” he says. ![]() The Latin term for the gesture of approval, Corbeill explains, is pollices premere, which means “press your thumbs” and has been described by Pliny the Elder as a common gesture of good wishes. Historical confusion about that thumb-pressing gesture exposes just how difficult it can be to track the evolution of body language. ![]() In other words, it’s the opposite of what we think.” “Sparing is pressing the thumb to the top of the fist and death is a thumbs-up. We have some sculptural references but it’s mostly verbal references,” says Anthony Corbeill, a professor of Latin at the University of Virginia, who wrote a book on gestures in ancient Rome. “We don’t have videotapes of people from antiquity. The thumbs-up sign that today means “O.K.” in that lexicon expressed disapproval. ![]() It’s not that gestures wouldn’t have been used to communicate such ideas, but rather that the Romans used a wide visual vocabulary in which the meanings of certain movements were different from their modern implications. But what’s the history of the gesture and how did it come to mean “yes” or “O.K.”?įirst off, the idea that the up- or downturned thumb originated as a gesture that would save or cost a gladiator’s life in Ancient Rome - an idea popularized by the movie Gladiator - isn’t quite right. It’s a widely recognized gesture: fingers curled into the palm, thumb stretched out, pointing skyward. com and you might find your answer in a future edition of Now You Know. Do you have a question about history? Send us your question at. ![]()
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