Japanese culture
What does Ahegao mean?
The hentai orgasm face: rolled eyes, tongue out, mouth open. It left the page and became a meme.
Definition
Ahegao is that face. Eyes rolled or crossed, tongue out, a thread of drool, flushed cheeks. In hentai and adult manga it is how the orgasm gets drawn at full volume, so loaded it turns into a cartoon.
The name sticks the moan to the face. Ahe comes from aheahe, the sound of panting. Gao is kao, face. When the drawing wants the same moment without so much distortion, Japanese fans say ikigao.
Off the page the pose went to T-shirts, hoodies and cosplay photos. In Japan it is still an adult-media face. On the Western internet it also shows up as a joke, already peeled off the scene.
Origin
The spelling is アヘ顔. Ahe shortens aheahe, the sound of panting or moaning. Gao is kao (顔) after rendaku, the k that turns into g in the middle of the word. Together it is the face of someone moaning. Weblio files the cut as the face of someone so far gone the pose slips, on the same shelf as acmegao.
History
The drawing cut settled in the mid-2000s. Around 2007, 2chan and Pixiv already treated the face as a gag and as heat. In 2008 the dōjin anthology A-H-E came out, and in Hiromitsu Takeda's manga I ♥ Scraper a character says the word in the sense of the face. Rito Kimi, in 2017, tells that genealogy and says the inventor cannot be pinned down. Then the pose left the page: Hirame's collage in 2015, a T-shirt on a Korean forum in March 2016, meme hoodies, and in 2018 FAKKU sold the print with the artist Asanagi.
How it emerged
The orgasm in adult drawing already existed. A short name was missing for that specific face: rolled eyes, tongue out, so loaded it becomes a stamp. Ahegao took the cut. When the Western internet needed a label for the pose and the print, the romaji came with it.
Usage examples
The file tag was just ahegao.
He showed up at the party in an ahegao hoodie.
Translations
- pt ahegao / cara de gozo
- en ahegao
- es ahegao / cara de orgasmo
Synonyms
- アヘ顔
- ikigao
- O-face