Hmm, "shakes," you don't know what you're gettin.

February 13, 2025 7:47 AM

"He shook his shoulders" - what gesture is this?

I'm reading one of the Bosch books and a gesture description threw me. The character is questioned and in his reply he shakes his shoulders. I can't figure out what physical idiom this is meant to be describing.

"Bosch shook his shoulders." - here is the description in context, you know it's not a mis-key because they repeat it twice on the same page. And they don't mean shrug, either, because just a couple pages later, Bosch shrugs his shoulders.

I'm one of those folks who subconsciously does the facial expressions and gestures when a book describes them, and this one yanked me right out of the subconscious into "the heck??" mode.

posted by phunniemee to Grab Bag (17 answers total)

I think they meant more of a shrug
posted by raccoon409 at 7:49 AM on February 13

Might need more context, but sounds to me like what I would call a shudder. So what happened on New Year's Eve at home? Something bad enough to cause a sort of cringe shudder reaction? If it was just a boring night in, probably not.
posted by fennario at 7:56 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I would think more of a quick dismissive shrug, like a "whatever, I don't want to talk about it" slight movement. My shoulders are moving more forward then up, and my mouth is involuntarily moving to one side. Rather than a full shrug, "eh, whaddya gonna do, right?" movement, where both my shoulders are my eyebrows go up.
posted by lapis at 8:06 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: The context is that the asker thinks that Bosch murdered someone, but Bosch definitely didn't because this particular book is #7 in a series of something like 30 books featuring Bosch that I've read already where he definitely has never historically murdered anyone. The character isn't really the shuddering type.
posted by phunniemee at 8:07 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Like for the "shook his shoulders" responses, his reply is one word or standing up to leave, but the "shrug" is accompanied by a full answer from him.
posted by lapis at 8:09 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I'm picturing an equivocal sort of waggling gesture where one shoulder goes up and the other down, and then he alternates.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:14 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

And they don't mean shrug, either, because just a couple pages later, Bosch shrugs his shoulders.

On the one hand, Grice's maxims imply you shouldn't use different words to mean the same thing. A reader should be able to infer that if you use a new term to refer to something it must logically refer to some new idea or nuance, else surely you would have used the previous term.

On the other hand, good writing style in English frowns on repetitious use of vocabulary. A reader should be treated to variety because that's the spice of life.

So maybe "shook his shoulders" and "shrugged his shoulders" are the writer intentionally opting for spice. Possibly they're the writer unintentionally forgetting they used a different expression earlier, and nobody noticing or caring in later edits.
posted by trig at 8:25 AM on February 13

"Shaking oneself" is a signal to "wake yourself up." I'd interpret this as, C'mon, Bosch, he told himself. Let's get going.
posted by SPrintF at 8:29 AM on February 13

Response by poster: I searched the book (luv 2 ebook) for the phrase and found:

- one earlier instance that I hadn't noticed, and
- one later instance I haven't got to yet that may shine a clarifying light on this whole thing
posted by phunniemee at 8:32 AM on February 13

I can't say exactly why but I would interpret it like the Indian Head bobble, in the intentionally vague mode.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:39 AM on February 13

I would think it's a non-committal, lopsided shoulder shrug sort of like the "expressed ambivalence " example in this tiktok video (its a bit over exaggerated, but the general idea). A shrug is two shoulders up, meaning I don't know. The two shoulder uneven bobble is more of an "eh, maybe maybe not" ambivalent sort of expression.
posted by CleverClover at 9:41 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I do this.

It's a gesture of negation, mild horror and revulsion. Kind of 'ugh, get this off of me' and 'how could you even think that?', depending on context.

The motion itself is a bit like a dog shaking water from its fur.
posted by jamjam at 9:46 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I suspect it's a quirk of the writer, for whom the expression means something, and they're assuming other people will understand it they way they do. I've noticed those sorts of blind-spots with many different authors. I think most people would interpret is as either a shudder or a shrug, but I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense as either. Very prolific writers can get a bit lazy about a lot of that stuff.
posted by pipeski at 9:47 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

To most people a shrug is when both shoulders go up and down in unison. I think this is the writer trying to describe the same vertical movement, but with the shoulders alternating. People do it to release a bit of body stress without being committal about anything.
posted by meinvt at 11:43 AM on February 13 [2 favorites]

Maybe it's that Shaq GIF
posted by kensington314 at 6:11 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Googling the phrase "shook his/her shoulders" gets mostly stuff about people dancing (Shakira, Elvis) or shaking their body out after getting free from confinement.
posted by Birds, snakes, and aeroplanes at 6:23 PM on February 13

Here are a couple of amusing examples of people "shaking their shoulders". Maybe they will shed some light.

Having read maybe a dozen examples using it in a way that seems similar to yours (that is, not synonomous with "shrug", not dancing, not shoulders being shaken by someone else) I would make this point:

"Shrug your shoulders" is a shoulder movement with a very specific meaning behind it. So "Shake your shoulders" seems to be used when the author has a shoulder movement or gesture in mind that means something else besides a shrug. Often - but not always - it appears to be a negative type of answer, like shaking the head.

My guess is, often authors are just looking for a different word to use in place of "shrug" because they want to indicate a shoulder movement, but also want to avoid the specific meaning or connotation that "shrug" brings.

Also, it is used pretty rarely.

A few examples:

- "But he shook his shoulders when he told me how Monk had betrayed him . . . ", Samuel Pepys

- "Now why don't you run upstairs and put on that nice mauve frock of yours?" April shook her shoulders. "I don't like mauve." - Alec Waugh

- 'She told me recently that I was too serious. Too serious! This is a serious business, I told her. She shook her shoulders. “But you are always talking about this” she said. “Your attention is on nothing only this”.' - BBC Irish

- '"No ; go away and don't carney me." She shook her shoulders waywardly.' - Good Words, 1877

- 'He cried: "I will give you my eldest daughter for wife." The young man shook his shoulders and the boat moved far off from the shore. Tlaiy cried: "I will give you my second daughter." Again the youth shook his shoulders. and the boat moved still farther off from the shore. He also declined the third daughter, but when Tlaiy offered his youngest daughter he shook his shoulders and the boat returned to the shore.' - The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal, 1888

- 'We reminded him of the law and custom of his country preventing women from wearing more dress than a small covering round the waist, and which in some cases was only a string of small beads. At this he frowned and shook his shoulders, and said something to this effect: "What is that to you, ye white men ? Cannot you admire the beautiful female figure as much as we can?"' - The Banner of Israel, 1895

Note how in (almost?) all of those cases, the meaning would be distinctly different if the author had used the word "shrugged" instead of "shook".

On the other hand: There are very definitely occasions where it is just very explicitly used as a synonym for "shrugged", perhaps just to change up the wording and avoid repeating a word too often, but very clearly intended as a simple synonym for "shrugged" - as in this example.
posted by flug at 1:06 AM on February 21