the.com/scowl
The face doing what the mouth is too polite to say.
means To pull your eyebrows down and mouth into a sharp frown that signals anger, displeasure, or sullen irritation.
from Scowl shows up in Middle English, likely borrowed from a Scandinavian source — compare Old Norse-descended dialect words and Swedish 'skula,' meaning to glower or look sideways. It's possibly related to a Germanic root tangled up with 'squint' and other words for looking askance, though the exact trail before it reached English is uncertain. What's clear is the word arrived already wearing the expression it describes.
- muscle used
- corrugator, same one that signals pain
- evolutionary role
- warns rivals before fists do
- linguistic root
- old norse, originally meant squint