– Satyakam Ray
Imagine you are in a hurry to the office as you’re already late by an hour. You live on the 8th floor of a skyscraper building, and the only way of communication downwards is the lift. Without delay, you go inside the lift and look at the phone absent-mindedly, checking the work schedule. 2 minutes later, you are still on the same floor as you forgot to press the ground button! Someone familiar from your floor opens the lift and finds you in that meandering state to rub salt in the wound. His first expression would be a burst of smirking fake laughter while you will be wearing a sheepish grin.
You are in a boring office presentation and wish to go to the cafeteria as soon as possible to end the monotony. Out of the blue, you get a message from someone you admire, and you blush, thinking about them. You secretly watch the message and chuckle as if it’s an amatory joke to kill time. You blush again!
Both incidents invoke different forms of laughter. But, the root cause of the two events is embarrassment and shyness. Linguistically speaking, the person wearing a sheepish grin wants to hide away from the world and doesn’t want to take full responsibility for their actions. It’s a sign of acquiescence, stupidity, and timidity. The embarrassed laugh is well-timed to skip the consequences of a mortifying bizarre behavior one does due to absent-mindedness, lack of clarity in what they are doing, or ignorance.
Blushing refers to reddening a person’s face due to passion, embarrassment, shyness, or romantic stimulation. A blushing chuckle happens when one person is smitten with somebody and gets a surprise present, text message, or a visit from the latter. It’s primarily involuntary and uncontrollable. Charles Darwin devoted Chapter 13 of his 1872 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals to complex emotional states, including self-attention, shame, shyness, modesty, and blushing. He described blushing as “… the most peculiar and human of all expressions.” // Source- Wikipedia.
Crozier hypothesized various psychophysiological mechanisms for blushing.
According to Crozier, “An explanation that emphasizes the blush’s visibility proposes that when we feel shame we communicate our emotion to others and in doing so we send an important signal to them. To blush at innuendo is to show awareness of its implications and to display modesty that conveys that you are not brazen or shameless.”
Reasons for such behaviors: Many offbeat behaviors can be explained by the concepts of baser social instincts and our outward personality in front of our sober, civilized society. A basic norm is about what is expected and what is eccentric going on. If anybody accidentally crosses the thin line between civil behavior and abnormality, their first reaction would be to ensure that he’s not being watched by someone else because there is a lingering fear of being mocked by peers, family members, and friends if by any chance, get caught in the act.
We are only human beings. We are prone to errors and misjudgments very often. It’s up to us to act either sheepishly or laugh off the matter, as it happens to everybody on the planet.
A blushing chuckle is more natural than a sheepish grin. But, sometimes, it leads to the amusement of other silent spectators of the blusher who are busy in their undiluted joyous behavior. If you happen to watch someone blush by any means, it’s better to leave them alone in that stage rather than unwantedly poking fun or making unnecessary comments. We react strongly to different life events and are accountable for our actions.
Types of laughter:
While we discuss the subtle difference between a sheepish grin and a blushing chuckle, it seems pertinent to delve into other forms of laughter.
- grin- smile broadly
- giggle- laugh lightly, but uncontrollably- usually silly laugh
- chuckle- laugh quietly
- smiling from ear to ear- smile widely due to extreme happiness
- gales of laughter- a lot of loud laughter
- be all smiles- look cheerful and pleased, especially in contrast to a previous mood.
- mirth- laughter due to amusement
- The Pan Am smile- fake smile
More Examples of the sheepish grin: When one person is forced to wear the sheepish grin.
- You are hurriedly entering the lift with a lot of people inside. You can wear, at best, a polite sheepish grin! Finally, someone points out that the maximum limit is already up, and everyone directs you to go outside and wait for your turn!
- Anybody familiar with old bikes without an autostart option can be a possible scenario of embarrassment. Suppose you are kicking the bike repeatedly to start the engine without the fuel on, and someone from the street comes & points out to you!
- Inside the restaurant, cinema hall, or public place, you mistakenly approach some stranger from behind, assuming he’s your friend. When you realize your mistake, all you have to do is apologize, wearing a sheepish grin.
- Your age is approaching 50, so your head is towards total baldness. You are covering up this fact before everybody by wearing a wig. While driving a bike, the wig accidentally falls in the society parking lot with many onlookers on a dreamy day. Now, you have two options: wear the wig & be John Cena ASAP or wear your best sheepish grin & drive away toward home reluctantly.
- One of your uncles is taking a selfie of the whole family in some festivity and is confused over where to click/touch on the phone!
More examples of the Blushing Chuckle:
- In public places like a restaurant or stadium, the person who loves you gets down on his knees and proposes- then the best response will be a blushing chuckle.
- Unexpected birthday surprise or celebration over a weekend
- You are going on a plane and discover that your seat is adjacent to your crush, who’s already seated! (more of a wicked smile, I suppose)
Concluding the sheepish grin vs. the blushing chuckle rigmarole, I would like to tell readers an amusing anecdote involving one of my best friends. The story’s protagonist, Pradeep, is slightly overweight (maybe 95-100 kg!). Once, many friends gathered to celebrate his birthday at his house party. After the cake-cutting happened, Pradeep went on to sit on his favorite chair, which was, for some reason, slightly damaged beforehand. Unable to bear the weight of Pradeep, the chair gave in and broke to pieces. In this process, Pradeep also fell to the ground, making a heavy crashing sound! While he was wearing his best sheepish grin, we all were rolling on the floor literally after gales of laughter! We forgot humanity for 5 minutes, and to this day, he’s being mocked in group chats or live video chats!
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