Thumbs Down Icon

[Oceangirl]

I searched but I couldn't find any reference to the 'thumbs down' icon. What does it signify and does someone assign it?

[Modemouth]

Do you mean on the board or in history?

I can help you with the history because I took five years of Latin...

Words from Roman History

These men once were horn-blowers and attendants
At every municipal arena, known as trumpeters in every village.
Now they present their own spectacles, and, to win applause,
Kill whomever the mob gives the “thumbs up”.

—Decimus Junius Juvenalis; a.k.a. Juvenal (c. 55-140 A.D.), “Third Satire”

Juvenal refers to the Roman custom of spectators’ voting on the fate of wounded gladiators with their thumbs. You may think a gladiator would appreciate the crowd’s “thumbs up” (verso pollice), but exactly the opposite is true. Where we give thumbs up as a sign of approval, it meant death to its Roman recipient; much to the crowd’s delight.
Thumbs down, signified “swords down,” which meant the loser was worth more to them alive than dead, and he was spared apparently so he could make up for his disgrace the next time he appeared in the arena. Keep this in mind the next time you give someone the “thumbs up” sign.
Our reverse interpretation of this custom apparently was the result of the work of the French artist Léon Gérôme who apparently understood the Latin verso (“turned”) to mean “turned down”, and therefore in his painting Pollice Verso (1873) he presents the death sentence with the thumbs-down gesture. The painting became so popular that Gérôme’s mistake became the accepted interpretation and it is unlikely that it will ever be changed back to the meaning that it had with the Romans.
Scholars before Gérôme gave support to the view that “thumbs down” among the Romans, meant the hapless gladiator was to be spared, not slain. The gesture meant “Throw your sword down”. A 1601 translation of Pliny equates the gesture with “assent” or “favor”, and John Dryden’s 1693 version of Juvenal’s Satires gives the thumb being bent back, not down, as the death signal.
Private investors spent enormous sums staging gladiatorial shows, despite attempts by various Roman governments to impose limits. Prisoners of war and slaves were sent to gladiatorial academies for training and then they were hired out for various public and private occasions.

[bikerbabe]

interisting

[Sugar]

Thanks Mary for the history lesson.

[pepper60]

If you see it on the internet, it generally means someone is
conveying their low or negative opinion of something/someone.

[Oceangirl]

[quote=Modemouth;317142]Do you mean on the board or in history?

Where we give thumbs up as a sign of approval, it meant death to its Roman recipient; much to the crowd’s delight.
..................
I'll have to notice next time the Gladiator is on....I assume he got a 'thumbs down' if the movie is true to history!

[Kelly]

thumbs down on this board is usually a negative comment towards something. just like a thumbs up is good.

[Oceangirl]

But if it's next to a post I made and I didn't click on the thumbs down icon .... does someone come in and add it? That happened to me recently. I thought perhaps that it meant the post itself was rated a thumbs down and not the subject matter of the post if you can understand that.

[manda40475]

I don't believe anyone can add it after the fact. I'd say you may have accidentally clicked it when you were posting.

[Modemouth]

Which post was it? I could change your post but I didn't. Changed posts are marked "edited by" whichever mod did it.