noun
frown; knitted brows
Rare standalone noun; almost exclusively used in the idiom 顰みに倣う (ひそみにならう), meaning 'to imitate someone's frown' or, more broadly, 'to blindly imitate others without thinking'.
「顰みに倣う」ということわざを知っていますか。
Do you know the proverb 'to imitate someone's frown'?
彼女は顰みに倣って、同じように眉をひそめた。
She imitated the frown and knitted her brows in the same way.
Alternate kanji spelling, also rare and mostly limited to the same set phrase.
Common modern expression for 'to frown' or 'to knit one's brows', used in everyday language, unlike the rare noun 顰み.
The kanji 顰 means 'frown' or 'knitted brows'. The reading ひそみ is the nominalized form of the verb ひそむ (顰む), an archaic verb meaning 'to knit one's brows'. The exact historical derivation is uncertain, but the word survives almost exclusively in the set phrase 顰みに倣う.