turn that what upside down?

The other day I was playing taboo with an Australian.

"Suppose your ... brows ... are ..."  (Here, he made an odd contortion with his face, with perhaps particular emphasis around the eyebrows.)

"Furrow!"  I exclaimed.  "Furrowed!"

Furrowed was not the right answer.

"Um," I said.  "Disdain?  Disgust?  Thoughtful?"

He began gesturing heaving at his eyebrows.

"Anger?  Contemplative?   Fed up?  Exasperated?"

It was then that I realized the last two emotions had much more to do with his present state than the word on the card.

"Frown!" he bellowed.

"Frown?" I asked.  "But you weren't frowning.  You were furrowing your eyebrows."

"That's a frown!" he insisted, with the confidence of one who has just performed the quintessential definition of, say, smiling, with both reckless abandon and absolute precision.

"No," I said.  "That was not a frown.  That was furrowing your eyebrows."

"Then how would you frown?"

I promptly frowned.

"That's a pout," he said.

"That's a frown," I said.

"Okay, so what's the difference between furrowing your eyebrows and frowning then?" he asked.

"One uses your eyebrows; one uses your mouth," I said.

"No," he said.  "A frown uses your eyebrows, not your mouth.  What are you talking about?"

"Frowns!" I said, also getting a bit annoyed.  "You frown when you're sad; you furrow your brows when you're, I don't know, pondering or something."

"No," he said.  "No one contorts their mouth like that when they're sad.  Think of a little kid.  One who's just lost his ice cream cone.  What face does his face make?"  (Here, he again furrowed his brow.)

"No," I said.  "He goes like this."  (Here, I again frowned.)

It went on like this for some time, him furrowing his brows until they nearly touched, and me frowning with more of a glower threatening to stick my face such forever until finally someone else stepped in.

"What are you talking about?" asked the other teacher, who probably just said "talking" because it was nicer than inquiring if we were trying to maim each other with nasty looks.

"(S)he doesn't know what frown means!" we said simultaneously.

"And he's meant to be an English teacher!" I added under my breath, then pounced on the nearest five teachers, searching wildly for the American.  "How would you frown?  How would you frown?  Show me a frown!"

One by one they all stopped, considered, and then performed some odd acrobatics with their forehead muscles and eyebrow.

And suddenly it dawned on me that Australians really believe "frowning" is furrowing their eyebrows, as every single one of them did.  So did the Brits.

"Steve!" I yelled, calling desperately for the other American.  "Steve!  Frown for me!"

Steve promptly frowned.

"Aha!" I declared triumphantly.  "That was a frown!"

"Yeah," said Steve.  "Turn that frown upside down."

I was a bit too busy proving my point to bother.  "You see," I explained somewhat less than patiently to all the gathered, frowning teachers, "in American English, a frown is the opposite of a smile.  Happy is to smile as sad is to frown.  It's a perfect analogy for us."

"Okay," said the teachers, and promptly went back to their photocopying and crosswords.

"Sheesh," I said going back to the game of taboo.  "I need a holiday."