face – English noun declension

English noun forms of face

Noun: face
Singularface
Pluralfaces

Sample Sentences

  • That girl has a pretty face.
  • The monkey pressed its face against the railings.
  • It was a joy to snatch some brief respite, and find himself in the rectory drawing–room. Listening here was as pleasant as talking; just to watch was pleasant. The young priests who lived here wore cassocks and birettas; their faces were fine and mild, yet really strong, like the rector's face; and in their intercourse with him and his wife they seemed to be brothers. [1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter X, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:]
  • ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’ [1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:]
  • Why the sad face?
  • Children! Stop making faces at each other!
  • MAKE Money-wholesale U.S. stamps—buy mint stamps below face. Be a dealer. Send $1.00 for two giant catalogs, refunded first order. Von Stein, Bernardsville, N.J. [1966 November, “Classified Opportunity Mart: Stamp Collecting [advertisement]”, in Popular Science Monthly, volume 189, number 5, page 229:]
  • With certain exceptions for valuable stamps, dealers and many collectors are only willing to offer a percentage of face (80-90%). So instead, Lloyd took the sheets to work and posted a message asking if anyone wanted to buy sheets of old U.S. stamps at face. [1995 January 18, Ed Jackson, “Re: US sheets -- Sell for how much?”, in rec.collecting.stamps (Usenet):]
  • Talking about buying below face, I've bought a lot of rolled coins at below face. I'm not going to pay face just to drag them to the bank and deposit them. [2005 March 16, Cliff, “Re: This sounds like a newbie question....”, in rec.collecting.coins (Usenet):]
  • Shut your face!
  • He's always stuffing his face with chips.
  • I'll be out in a sec. Just let me put on my face.
  • Our chairman is the face of this company.
  • He managed to show a bold face despite his embarrassment.
  • As the film points out, the actor became known as “the face of Aids”. [2023 October 6, Ryan Gilbey, “The double life of Rock Hudson: ‘Let’s be frank, he was a horndog!’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]
  • lose face
  • save face
  • You've got some face coming round here after what you've done.
  • a. 1694, John Tillotson, Preface to The Works
  • This is the man that has the face to charge others with false citations.
  • This is a face of her that we have not seen before.
  • Poverty is the ugly face of capitalism.
  • to fly in the face of danger
  • to speak before the face of God
  • The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day. [1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:]
  • It was just the usual faces at the pub tonight.
  • He better not show his face around here no more.
  • He owned several local businesses and was a face around town.
  • Vincent was the very best dancer in Bay Ridge—the ultimate Face. [1976 June 7, Nik Cohn, “Inside the Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”, in New York Magazine:]
  • The fans cheered on the face as he made his comeback.
  • The face of the cliff loomed above them.
  • The cliff I am trying to scale is the face of Mount Roraima, an enormous sandstone mesa, or tepui. [1989 May, Uwe George, “Venezuela's Islands in Time”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 534:]
  • Then, the torpedo bombers arrived, but, unlike those that had dealt Hornet such a heavy blow, these split their attention between Enterprise, South Dakota, Portland, and the rather-bewildered destroyer USS Smith, which got a damaged Kate and its torpedo to the face for its trouble. [2021 February 3, Drachinifel, 17:16 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - Santa Cruz (IJN 2 : 2 USN), archived from the original on 04 Dec 2022:]
  • An interesting feature of the church is the invisible clock, which you can hear thumping away as you enter. Constructed in 1525, it is one of the oldest timepieces in England. It chimes the hours and the quarters, and every three hours it plays a hymn. But it has no faces. [1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 163:]
  • They turned the boat into the face of the storm.
  • Put a big sign on each face of the building that can be seen from the road.
  • They climbed the north face of the mountain.
  • She wanted to wipe him off the face of the earth.
  • But there went vp a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 2:6:]
  • Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face. [1812–1818, Lord Byron, “(please specify |canto=I to IV)”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. , London: John Murray,, (please specify the stanza number):]
  • Captain Anderson: He has the secrets from the beacon. He has an army of geth at his command. And he won't stop until he's wiped humanity from the face of the galaxy! [2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-1:]
  • A cube has six faces, each of which is a square.
  • When playing aggro decks, hit face whenever you can; it's not worth spending your resources to try to control the board.
  • a pulley or cog wheel of ten inches face
  • For the typophiles reading this, the book is attractively designed. It is set in Classic Aldine, a handsome face akin to the more popular Palatino. The designer's work is unfortunately marred by indifferent printing. [1982 August 28, Mark McHarry, “A Minor Delight”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 7, page 12:]
  • The Lord make his face shine vpon thee, and be gracious vnto thee: [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Numbers 6:25:]
  • My face will I turne also from them, and they shall pollute my secret place: for the robbers shall enter into it and defile it. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 7:22:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-
3. Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁k-
4. Proto-Indo-European *-yéti
5. Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁kyéti
6. Proto-Italic *θakjō
7. Proto-Italic *fakjō
8. Latin faciō
9. Proto-Italic *-jēs
10. Latin -iēs
11. Latin faciēs
12. Late Latin facia
13. Old French facebor.
14. Middle English face
15. English face
16. From Middle English face, from Old French face, from Late Latin facia, from Latin faciēs (“form, appearance”). Doublet of facies. Displaced native onlete (“face, countenance, appearance”), anleth (“face”), from Old English anwlite, andwlita, compare German Antlitz; Old English ansīen (“face”), Middle English neb (“face, nose”) (from Old English nebb), Middle English ler, leor, leer (“face, cheek, countenance”) (from Old English hlēor), and non-native Middle English vis (“face, appearance, look”) (from Old French vis) and Middle English chere (“face”) from Old French chere.
17. In the sense of face as in reputation, influenced by Chinese 面子 (miànzi) or 臉／脸 (liǎn), both of which mean literally the front of the head and metaphorically one's public image. See lose face. See: Middle English Nouns 'face', Latin Nouns 'faciēs'.

Verbs referencing "face"

Russian Nouns одеяло, Icelandic Nouns fés, Danish Nouns fjæs, Swedish Nouns fejs, Irish Nouns fásáil, Norwegian Bokmål Nouns fjes, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns fjes, Swedish Nouns feja, Russian Nouns фейс.