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Caïn by Henri Vidal, Tuileries Garden, Paris, 1896

A facepalm (sometimes also referred to as 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 often exaggerated by giving the motion more force and making a slapping noise when the hand comes in contact with the face. 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], and Google Trends has it "facepalm" first appearing in March of 2007. 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 word was added to the English Oxford Dictionary in August 2011,[10] marking it as a legitimate word in the English language.

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.[11]

Types of Uses

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Physical Gesture

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"Facepalm" is used regularly to allow someone to show their embarrassment[1] for an act committed by themselves, or on behalf of another human's actions. The gesture is also used often show a person's disapproval or frustration with an action, statement, or item.

Written Work

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"Facepalm" is mostly used in casual communication between peers when it is used at all in written work. The meaning is usually the same as in a physical gesture, but instead of bringing a hand to the face, or the face to the hand, the word, facepalm, is just written out often surrounded by astriks as in *facepalm*. It is also used frequently on the Internet with either a picture of a person, or animal, doing a the physical gestured accompanied by a caption to give further details. Instead of a picture an ASCII set of symbols developed to look like the symbol may be used. These ASCII symbols often come in different sizes and complexities, for different purposes such as in a blog or comment section of an article, or for use in a text message.

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The facepalm gesture has been used widely throughout popular culture. The gesture is used in movies, comics, and television extensively to show a variety of empotions such as frustration or disappointment. The gesture has appeared in

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,[12] making it into an internet meme. As a meme the face palm was established in 2004 by being added to the urban dictionary website.[13] Since then it has gained widespread popularity as a meme or comment image to portray the users frustration or disappointment of a certain topic. Expanding far from the original Urban Dictionary entry. This idea has spread like a virus with no peak in sight. If a search is done then you will see a multitude of images of this gesture. ranging from animated figures to Jean-Luc Picard doing this motion.

Internet Usage

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Facepalm's meaning online is the same as the physical gesture's meaning in real life, it expresses frustration, disappointment, embarrassment,[1] shock, surprise or sarcasm.[2]. It's online use is to portray emotions and feelings that otherwise may not be easily expressed through text alone. Facepalm is understood online because of its common usage in the real world.

The facepalm gesture is a popular internet meme to show a user's frustration or disappoint in an article, comment, or post from another user. The most commonly used facepalm meme is a picture of a person, usually Jean-Luc Picard, with their hand on their face and an accompanying caption that gives further clarification to what emotion is trying to be portrayed. The gesture can also be represented by using symbols, such as periods, parentheses, or brackets, to create an outline of a person doing the physical gesture. The symbol representation of facepalm can be made in many different sizes for different purposes, such as a comment or a text message. Online use of the gesture is not only through a picture or a representation of a picture, sometimes just the word, facepalm, is used to show someone's disapproval or embarrassment. The word is also often surrounded in asterisks, *facepalm*, to separate the gesture from other words in a post. Since its inception, facepalm has gained widespread popularity as a meme or comment image to portray a user's frustration or disappointment of a certain topic. Many sites such as Reddit use this image frequently and in many different ways, often to finish a story or joke that has been deemed dumb or had an obvious punchline.


As a meme this concept has spread itself far and wide over the World Wide Web. In a type of Darwin-esque survival scenario a meme is an idea that strives to reproduce just as a virus would. Except for the fact that it is not the body which gets used for reproduction it is the mind. Memes strive to reproduce and spread by using human thoughts and word of mouth spread. The internet has rapidly accelerated that process. With sites such as Reddit and Digg which help the spread of memes faster than ever. Their voting system only enforces the survival of the fittest or in this case funniest which allows a meme to continue on and been seen by the most amount of people.

This gesture has its own entry in the TV Tropes website [14] where its usage has been recorded in all forms of media including television, movies, video games, and real world examples. Since its inception the face palm has gained widespread popularity as a meme or comment image to portray the users frustration or disappointment of a certain topic. Many sites such as Reddit use this image frequently and in many different ways. Usually used as a finisher to a story or joke that has been deemed dumb or had an obvious punchline. This motion is oftentimes found in Japanese entertainment or anime and manga. This is more likely than finding the gesture in any live action work.

Similar Gestures

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Headdesk: "When a character expresses their overwhelming frustration by banging their head (often repeatedly) against something nearby." Oftentimes a desk or a wall.[15] Where as the "headdesk" gesture is often done successive times to emphasize the motion, the facepalm gesture is often a singular act.

Face Fault: When shocked or surprised, often by an absurdity or non sequitur, the listener may fall over onto his face, his limbs in a twisted mass above him. In its typical form, the character in question has just heard someone else say something so incredibly stupid that it, quite literally, floors them.[16]

Headslapper: "A mistake of obvious stupdiity", a facepalm can be seen as a pun on this noun when taken in the sarcastic sense.

See also

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References

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Facepalms.
  1. ^ a b c d Maxwell, Kerry (4 Jul 2011). "facepalm". BuzzWord. Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
  2. ^ a b c d 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.
  3. ^ http://wordspy.com/words/facepalm.asp
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Vaux, Rob (30 Jun 2011). "Biggest Transformers Face Palm Moments". Mania. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
  6. ^ Paczkowski, John (21 Nov 2011). "Double FacePalm: HP Blew Billions on webOS". All Things Digital. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
  7. ^ Rawlinson, Linnie (28 Apr 2010). "'Bigotgate' goes viral as UK PM says *facepalm*". UK Election Blog. CNN. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
  8. ^ Evans, Jon (30 Jul 2011). "Technology + Politics = Facepalm". TechCrunch. Retrieved 22 Nov 2011.
  9. ^ Malik, Shiv (23 Nov 2011). "Lexicographers cram 'squeezed middle' into word of the year slot". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 Nov 2011.
  10. ^ “Facepalm.”OxfordEnglishDictionary,n.d.http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/ definition/american_english/facepalm.
  11. ^ Laidre, M. E. (2011). Brosnan, Sarah Frances (ed.). "Meaningful Gesture in Monkeys? Investigating whether Mandrills Create Social Culture". PLoS ONE. 6 (2): e14610. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014610. PMC 3032724. PMID 21311591.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ “Know Your Meme: Rage Comics.” Accessed January 17, 2014. http://www.viddler.com/embed/183d0c96/?f=1&autoplay=0&player=simple&loop=false&nologo=false&hd=true.
  14. ^ “Main/Face Palm - Television Tropes & Idioms.” Accessed January 27, 2014. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FacePalm.
  15. ^ “Main/Headdesk - Television Tropes & Idioms.” Accessed January 27, 2014. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Headdesk.
  16. ^ “Main/Face Fault - Television Tropes & Idioms.” Accessed January 27, 2014. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceFault.

Category:Internet memes Category:Hand gestures Category:Nonverbal communication Category:Words coined in the 2000s

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