Among the features, the mouth is crowned the 'Officer of Intake and Outlay' — one gate, two flows: food and drink in, words out. What the ancients read there was precisely the weather of those two flows — how a person speaks, treats others, and takes in life. 'The mouth is the gate of speech and the pivot of favour and censure,' say the manuals, and every piece of lip-and-mouth lore hangs on that thread of expression and feeling.
Thick or thin: the two poles of feeling and phrasing
Full lips are traditionally read toward warmth and substance: perhaps fewer words, but each with weight, and loyalty that runs solid once given. The old books add a margin note — deep feeling absorbs deeply, and a bruise takes time to turn the page. Thin lips take the eloquence register: fluent phrasing, clean logic, a natural hand at reasoning and negotiation; the same pen then writes the footnote 'feeling filtered through reason' — closeness carefully rationed, warmth slower to arrive.
The two lips are also read separately: in the traditional register the upper lip governs affection and giving, the lower lip appetite and receiving. A fuller upper lip is glossed as one who gives first and prizes the bond; a fuller lower lip as pragmatic self-possession, one's own footing secured before the rest. Balanced lips closing in a clean seam earn the classical phrase 'lip and mouth in concert' — the baseline of good mouth lore.
Mouth lines and corners: the raised moon and the capsized boat
Corners that rest naturally upturned, closing like a waxing crescent, form the 'raised-moon mouth' — a top-shelf reading: optimism that gathers people, speech that warms the room, and no shortage of good meals or good company, tradition holds. Corners that settle downward like an overturned hull form the 'capsized-boat mouth', glossed in the old books as a careworn mind and frost on the words. The standing caveats apply double here: this is a cultural label of tendency, and corner set is heavily shaped by expressive habit — the ancients themselves said 'the mouth turns with the heart' and declined to read it as fixed.
Size carries its own register. A large mouth is read as boldness — daring to speak and to answer for it; 'a mouth that could hold a fist' was the classical hyperbole for those bound for command. A small mouth is glossed as care and discretion: words counted before spent, and kept once given. Crisp definition — sharp peaks, clean lip lines — is read as ordered expression and a sense of when to advance or yield; soft, blurred lines as easy-going company that does not contend.
The philtrum: the groove above the lip
The vertical channel from nose base to upper lip — the philtrum — holds a special seat: in the year-by-year map it governs age fifty-one, and positionally it is the causeway between the face's middle and lower courts. Tradition favours it deep, long and straight, glossed as an unbroken current and stamina for the later road; shallow and faint, the old reading counsels storing strength and leaving margins. The old texts also tie the philtrum to family and offspring in versions too many to reconcile — we record the name and leave it there.
From lip lore to measurement
Lip thickness is really a ratio question: the same lips read full on a narrow face and thin on a broad one, and the naked eye is easily led by the overall impression. Modern tools can measure lip height against face height, mouth width against nose width, and the angle of the corner-to-corner line on a photo — settling 'thick, thin, large, small' into checkable bands before the classical glosses are consulted. Even 'raised moon or capsized boat' can be computed from the relative height of corners and lip centre, far more steadily than eyeballing.
To close: the lore of lips and mouth is a cultural narrative in which the ancients wrote 'expression and feeling' onto the face — reading it is reading how a tradition understood communication and warmth. Cultural and entertainment reference only; never a judgement of, or advice for, anyone.