He wrote: "Thumbs up, Tommy’s expression which means ‘everything is fine with me'." A visual example of the British use of "thumbs up" having a positive meaning (or, " okay") from the 1920s can be seen 19 minutes into the British-made silent 1927 film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, where the younger man examines some paper money for the older man and declares it "good" (not counterfeit) with a "thumbs up" using both hands. Empey was an American who served in the British armed forces during World War I. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest written instance of "thumbs-up" (with a positive meaning) as being from Over the Top, a 1917 book written by Arthur Guy Empey. For example in the seventeenth century, see the Diego Velázquez painting The Lunch.Ī truck driver giving a thumb sign in Britain, 1940 Over time, the mere sight of an upraised thumb came to symbolize harmony and kind feelings. ĭesmond Morris in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution traces the practice back to a medieval custom used to seal business transactions. The term fistmele is a Saxon word that refers to that measurement. This fistmele should be about 7 inches (18 cm), which is about the same as a fist with a thumb extended. Before use, the fistmele (or the "brace height") was checked, that being the distance between the string and the bow on an English longbow. It has been suggested that 'thumbs up' was a signal from English archers preparing for battle that all is well with their bow and they are ready to fight. In modern popular culture, necessarily without a historical basis from Ancient Rome, it is wrongly presumed that "thumbs down" was the signal that a defeated gladiator should be condemned to death "thumbs up", that he should be spared. According to Anthony Corbeill, a classical studies professor who has extensively researched the practice, thumbs up signalled killing the gladiator while "a closed fist with a wraparound thumb" meant sparing him. While it is clear that the thumb was involved, the precise type of gesture described by the phrase pollice verso and its meaning are unclear in the historical and literary record. Search queries for "downvoting roman" saw an initial spike in early June 2011 when the first Advice Animal threads began appearing.- Juvenal, Against the City of Rome (c. This image has been used on Reddit as a way of begrudgingly giving an upvote. The My Little Pony derivative received 3985 up votes and 1441 points overall.Īnother well-known GIF derivative depicts a different scene from the movie, in which Emperor Commorus reluctantly gives a thumbs up after folding under pressure from the audience. The Downvoting Roman series has also spawned some derivatives, including an animated GIF version of Commodus giving a thumbs down, as well as a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic version which was created specifically as a reaction image for the My Little Pony subreddit on December 29th, 2011. As of September 2013, Downvoting Roman has more than 24,000 results on Quickmeme, nearly 1,200 results on Memegenerator and more than 2,000 results on the AdviceAnimal subreddit. Additional instances can also be found on Tumblr, MemeRush and. However, another instance posted the next day received 2735 up votes and 698 points, reaching the frontpage of Reddit.ĭownvoting Roman has also been featured on The Bigster and Slacktory and has a Facebook fan page. The first instance of the image macro was posted to the Advice Animals subreddit on July 6th, 2011 but did not receive any points. After the main character, Maximus Decimus Meridius, defeats his opponent in battle, Emperor Commodus gives a thumbs down in a dramatic gesture of disapproval, thereby requiring Maximus to kill his opponent. The still photo is from a scene in the 2000 film Gladiator.
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