" Shrugging the shoulders likewise
expresses patience, or the absence of any intention to resist.
Hence the muscles which raise the shoulders are sometimes called,
as I have been informed by an artist, the patience muscles."
Shylock the Jew, says,
"Signor Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto have you rated me
About my monies and usances;
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug."
_Merchant of Venice_, act 1. sc. 3.
Sir C. Bell has given[14] a life-like figure of a man,
who is shrinking back from some terrible danger,
and is on the point of screaming out in abject terror.
He is represented with his shoulders lifted up almost to his ears;
and this at once declares that there is no thought of resistance.
As shrugging the shoulders generally implies "I cannot do this or that,"
so by a slight change, it sometimes implies "I won't do it."
The movement then expresses a dogged determination not to act.
Olmsted describes[15] an Indian in Texas as giving a great shrug
to his shoulders, when he was informed that a party of men were
Germans and not Americans, thus expressing that he would have
nothing to do with them.
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