face

n.

1. 1. The surface of the front of the head from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear.
   2. A person: We saw many new faces on the first day of classes.
2. A person's countenance: a happy face.
3. A contorted facial expression; a grimace: made a face at the prospect of eating lemons.
4. Facial cosmetics: put one's face on.
5. Outward appearance: the modern face of the city.
6. 1. Value or standing in the eyes of others; prestige: lose face.
   2. Self-assurance; confidence: The team managed to maintain a firm face even in times of great adversity.
7. Effrontery; impudence: had the face to question my judgment.
8. The most significant or prominent surface of an object, especially:
   1. The surface presented to view; the front.
   2. A façade.
   3. Outer surface: the face of the earth.
   4. A marked side: the face of a clock; the face of a playing card.
   5. The right side, as of fabric.
   6. An exposed, often precipitous surface of rock.
9. A planar surface of a geometric solid.
10. Any of the surfaces of a rock or crystal.
11. The end, as of a mine or tunnel, at which work is advancing.
12. The appearance and geologic surface features of an area of land; topography.
13. Printing.
    1. A typeface or range of typefaces.
    2. The raised printing surface of a piece of type.

v., faced, fac·ing, fac·es.

v.tr.

1. To occupy a position with the face toward: stood and faced the audience.
2. To front on: a window that faces the south.
3. 1. To confront with complete awareness: had to face the facts.
   2. To overcome by confronting boldly or bravely: “What this generation must do is face its problems” (John F. Kennedy).
   3. To confront with impudence. See synonyms at defy.
4. 1. To be certain to encounter; have in store: An unskilled youth faces a difficult life.
   2. To bring or to be brought face to face with: “The prospect of military conflict . . . faced us with nightmarish choices” (Henry A. Kissinger).
5. To cause (troops) to change direction by giving a command.
6. Games. To turn (a playing card) so that the face is up.
7. To furnish with a surface or cover of a different material: bronze that is faced with gold foil.
8. To line or trim the edge of, especially with contrasting material: face a hem with lace.
9. To treat the surface of so as to smooth.

v.intr.

1. To be turned or placed with the front toward a specified direction.
2. To turn the face in a specified direction.

phrasal verbs:

face down

1. To attain mastery over or overcome by confronting in a resolute, determined manner: face down an opponent in a debate; faced the enemy down.

face off Sports.

1. To start play in ice hockey, lacrosse, and other games by releasing the puck or ball between two opposing players.

face up

1. To confront an unpleasant situation with resolution and assurance: had to face up or get out; finally faced up to the problem.

idioms:

face the music

1. To accept the unpleasant consequences, especially of one's own actions.

in the face (or teeth) of

1. In opposition to or defiance of.

on the face of it

1. From appearances alone; apparently: On the face of it, the problem seems minor.

show (one's) face

1. To make an appearance: Don't show your face on my property again.

to (one's) face

1. In the view or hearing of: insulted me to my face.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *facia, from Latin faciēs.]

faceable face'a·ble adj.

1. Printing surface that makes contact with the material to be imprinted.

2. Style of type used for printing-that is, the typeface. See also boldface; gothic; italic; sans serif; serif.

First page of an insurance policy.

The face is the most complex-surface structure of human and other vertebrate anatomy — in humans containing a total of 14 bones and 32 teeth: it includes the frontal bone supporting the forehead; a cartilaginous nasal cavity; prominent cheeks supported by malar bones; circular muscles around the mouth and each eye; other musculature radiating from the circular muscles; a fixed upper jaw (maxilla) and movable lower jaw (mandible) ; and sensory apparatus for vision, hearing, taste and smell.

The human face is commonly seen as the key to identifying individuals and comprehending their emotional states and intentions. Its characteristic structures and expressions have been the focus of much of culture, both East and West, making the face perhaps the most important anatomical subject of mythology, religion, art, and literature. When Marlowe had Faustus ask of Helen,

‘Was this the face that launched a thousand shipsAnd burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’,

he echoed the elders of Troy, whom Homer had murmur,

‘Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.’

The terrible beauty of the human face, its potential to reveal and to conceal, its alleged power to disclose essential features of the individual, the race, or the species, its ability to inspire love and motivate acts of utter unreason, together with its capacity for pretence and deception, mark it as a subject of unending interest and complexity.

Physiological and evolutionary development

The human face begins in fetal development as a forehead protrusion above an incipient mouth at approximately four weeks gestational age. At seven months the face has achieved much of its early development — though the proportion of facial surface to cranium; the growth of nasal structures; the eruption of teeth; the fusion of facial skeletal sutures; and the relative facial dimensions in depth, height, and width continue to develop, some well into adolescence.

While it is possible to find evolutionary traces of the modern human face at each stage from early vertebrates to Homo sapiens, facial structures are important boundaries between humans and our prehuman ancestors. The Australopithecenes and other prehumans had relatively large faces in proportion to the size of their heads, whereas modern humans have proportionally smaller faces and larger braincases filled with larger brains. Jaw and tooth structure are less complex and smaller in modern humans, resulting in less protrusive jaws and a more vertical profile. Prominent and distinctive in this profile are the nose and the well-defined chin separating modern humans both from prehuman ancestors and from other, contemporary primates.

Evolutionary variation in facial features has helped physiognomy and physical anthropology attempt to define racial categories. While certain features are more prominent in one geographic racial group than in another, such categorization is not definitive or entirely reliable. Attempts to make such judgments have had profound social consequences, however.

The face in the mirror

The idea that the face both reveals and conceals or masks identity is a very ancient one. In classical drama, great literature, and bank robbery alike, masks obscure or conceal facial features and thus conceal identity. Facial recognition is an early and primary skill; very young infants have been shown to prefer the sight of the human face to other images.

Facial cues have been shown to be vital in several areas of recognition, including age, sex, ethnicity and race, emotional state, honesty and deception, and personal identity. The most important aspect of recognition is that of individual identity. While individual features of a face are important in recognizing other aspects of a person, identifying an individual flows largely from identifying their face as a whole. The ability to pick out one's adult friend from a group photograph taken in his youth seems an unremarkable task and yet requires remarkable powers of discernment. Family resemblance marks faces as of a type, allowing identification of siblings and different generations, but recognizing individuals requires more than specific features. This ability is strongest when one identifies individuals within one's own racial group; research has shown that cross-racial and perhaps cross-ethnic recognition is more difficult than identification within one's own race or ethnicity. Psychologist Leslie Zebrowitz hypothesizes that facial recognition is much like language acquisition, and that early immersion in another racial group may be necessary to facilitate cross-racial identification.

Facial recognition of personal identity appears to have a specific location within the brain. Prosopagnosia, a disorder in which there is a deficit of facial recognition, is caused by lesions in a specific part of the visual system of the brain. Prosopagnosics are often able to identify aspects of faces, but they are unable to recognize persons — sometimes even themselves — by using facial cues. In such cases, identity reverts to other cues, including voice.

Reading faces

Children are usually taught ‘not to judge a book by its cover’, and most adults recognize the ability of a façade — architectural or otherwise — to misrepresent in Potemkin-village fashion what it seeks to conceal. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is a commonly-cited example of both the centrality of reading faces for the meaning they represent and the difficulty of doing so. Despite this, psychological research and the clear evidence of artistic and literary experience demonstrate that our judgments of physical, mental, and moral health often proceed from the first glance of facial appearance.

A remark to a friend that she doesn't ‘look’ well is usually an elliptical reference to the friend's facial appearance. Traditional Japanese and Chinese medicine use facial appearance as a key diagnostic indicator. In contemporary Western medicine, the term ‘facies’ is used to describe the general facial appearance of a patient, especially useful in the diagnosis of disorders marked by phenotypic facial characteristics. Some of these conditions (for example, Down's syndrome and Patau syndrome), are caused by genetic anomalies and produce serious physical and mental abnormalities, while others (fetal alcohol syndrome, for example) are congenital in nature, and still others (syphilis and measles, for example) are caused by infectious agents.

Genetically-linked and congenital disorders are often associated not only with specific facial anomalies but also with a general tendency toward facial asymmetry. Many infectious diseases produce distinctive facial appearances that are helpful and sometimes central to diagnosis. Parents know that, at first (facial) glance, the indication of a child's common cold or fever is found in changes in facial appearance. Beyond changes in appearance caused by diseases or disorders, correlations have been suggested between specific facial structural types and certain diseases, including polio and some types of ulcer. Some evolutionary theorists have gone beyond these results in asserting a correlation between facial asymmetry and an increased susceptibility to infectious and genetically-linked disease. The experimental evidence for this claim is inconclusive.

The evidence linking specific facial appearances both with underlying causal disorders and increased vulnerability to specific conditions is slightly better, however, especially where the facial characteristics and expressions are indicative of living patterns and personality types. The veined, red nose associated with chronic alcoholism and the frequent scowls, raising of upper eyelids, and tensing of eyes of a ‘Type A’ personality can help diagnose their immediate causes. Even here, however, one must be careful, since these same facial characteristics can be caused by other conditions: the red nose of the ‘alcoholic’ could indicate instead the skin disease rosacea, or even something as simple as a bad cold or allergies. Likewise, the scowls and other features of the ‘Type A’ may indicate specific neurological damage or, if one is observing a single instance, simply a bad case of indignation or even indigestion.

Ordinary experience and results in experimental psychology demonstrate that many people judge the mental or moral health of others by their facial structures and expressions. Classical Greek medicine attributed many mental (especially emotional) disorders to an imbalance of the four humours (blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile) and, in a forerunner of the contemporary use of ‘facies’, diagnosed mental and physical disorders in part by the surface expressions of the imbalance of colour or physical shape in the face. The development of physiognomy as an explanatory framework for describing and predicting psychological (and later social and moral) conditions on the basis of facial and other physical conformation provides a more subtle if no less flawed understanding than the theory of the four humours. A work attributed to Aristotle (Physiognomonica) gives the first recorded systematic treatment of physiognomic principles, with both a description of the diagnostic method and a catalogue of results. Aristotle's treatment of the topic relies on analogies to the facial characteristics of animals, a practice nearly universal in human culture. Greek mythology and art, astrological traditions, medieval bestiaries and heraldry, children's fables, personal naming practices in Native American and other cultures, and many colloquial expressions (‘a face like a dumb ox’) all make use of such analogies. Classical references attempt to describe the systematic correlation between face and mind, while medieval efforts joined description to prediction.

By the eighteenth century, physiognomy had assimilated many modern advances in biology, especially improvements in anatomical knowledge. By the end of that century and throughout the nineteenth century, physiognomists developed a theory of mental, moral, and especially evolutionary fitness that could be determined in large part by facial characteristics. Swiss physiognomist J. C. Lavater's 1772 work on reading faces was very influential. (Charles Darwin relates the story of how he was nearly denied passage on HMS Beagle because the captain, influenced by Lavater's views, was convinced that the shape of Darwin's nose indicated insufficient ‘energy’ and ‘determination’ for the voyage.) Textbooks in psychiatry and criminology regularly assumed the truth of these theories. In one recently cited example, Krafft-Ebing's 1879 textbook on insanity claimed that ‘every psychopathic state, like the physiologic states of emotion, has its own peculiar facial expression and general manner of movement which, for the experienced, on superficial observation, makes a probable diagnosis possible.’ Illustrations in such texts provided carefully categorized examples of such correspondences.

Reading faces as a way of detecting criminality and moral or social degeneracy is an important aspect of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century physiognomy. The Italian physician and criminologist Cesare Lombroso saw criminality (for the most part) as an atavism, with the natural criminal one who ‘reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals.’ The marks, the stigmata — as Lombroso revealingly termed them — of the criminal type once again reflect the analogy with animal types. Lombroso found the stigmata concentrated both in ‘primitive’ non-European races and in Europeans from the lowest socio-economic classes. While the stigmata include features of the feet, arms, hair type, etc., the most significant are facial or facially-related. The frontispiece to his work Criminal Man is a veritable rogue's gallery of facial types, arranged by the type of crime to which their anatomical destiny condemned them. Stephen Jay Gould's critique of Lombroso lists the facial stigmata of the criminal man, including large jaw size, high face-to-cranium proportions, pronounced wrinkles, a less prominent forehead, large ears, and darker skin. This last feature reveals the assumptions colouring much of Lombroso's pseudo-science and by extension much of criminal anthropology and physiognomy: natural criminality and natural superiority coincided very nicely with then-existing assumptions about natural hierarchies in intellectual, social, political, and economic life. One's face, together with other salient physical features, truly was one's destiny, and while the natural criminal is not to be blamed in any ultimate sense, neither could he be changed. ‘We see in the criminal man, ’ Lombroso wrote, ‘a savage man and, at the same time, a sick man.’ These ‘sick men’ were ‘true savages in the midst of our brilliant European civilization’. Such biological determinism was very influential at the end of the nineteenth century and helped pave the way for the early-to-mid twentieth-century eugenics movement that marked the naturally (physiologically, culturally, morally, racially) defective for passive elimination by controlled breeding or, as in the hands of Nazi racial theorists, for active elimination in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

While the theory of the humours is a quaint antiquity and the sometimes pernicious theories of physiognomy have been dismissed by modern science, it is clear that many continue to read physical, mental, and moral health in faces. The long and deeply held view that the face reveals essential aspects of the self, that facial cues tell us more than science is willing to admit, remains. Schopenhauer's comment on the subject, that ‘as a rule a man's face … is the monogram of all his thoughts and aspirations’ is more reflective of how we actually live than many of us care to acknowledge.

A smooth impostor or the motions of the mind?

The face has been exploited in its essential ambiguity in culture generally, and in art and literature in particular. Portraiture no less than caricature draws upon generalizations about human nature and character to depict the face as concealer and revealer, and Western literature has used the set of a face to paint the intellectual, emotional, and moral scenes of its dramas. To be faceless is to be without identity and thus without weight, and yet artistic and literary portrayals of the face often fail to deliver on the promise of portraying a clear and unambiguous identity. Da Vinci's characterization of his portraits as depicting ‘the motions of the mind’ sits face-to-face with Pierre Corneille's remark that:

The face is often only
A smooth impostor.

In addition to the attempt to describe through portrayal the emotional reality of the subject, the art of the face has been put to other purposes. Idealized political types, psychological traits, and moral principles have been conveyed through artistic representations of the face since ancient times, serving political, religious, and commercial ideals. From the distorted Paleolithic faces on the cave walls at Les Trois Frères in southern France, which may have had a magical function; to ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian use of the face in art, serving in large part religious and political purposes; to classical Greek depictions of an aesthetic ideal; to iconography and religious art in the Christian world; to nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘faces’ of liberty and revolution; to the modern use of well-scrubbed young faces in commercial advertising, the human face has been a vehicle for both artist and society, giving form to their ideals.

In some contemporary philosophy the face has taken on a new and important role, though one that echoes earlier humanisms. In the twilight of postmodernism, some philosophers in the European continental tradition are looking to the human face as a, if not the, mark of the ethical. Emmanuel Levinas has stated that

‘the other becomes my neighbor precisely through the way the face summons me, calls for me, begs for me, and so doing recalls my responsibility, and calls me into question.’

Levinas points to the twentieth century's remarkable accomplishments in defacing or effacing individuals, both in body and in spirit, and points out that ethical individuality is accomplished — if it is accomplished — only in the gaze of the other, of the ‘epiphany of the face as a face’. Perhaps the terrible beauty of the face can find its ethical reflection in the mirror of the other. It is sure to retain its ambiguity, its complexity, and its centrality in human life.

— Jeffrey H. Barker

Bibliography

• Davies, G. et al., (1981). Perceiving and remembering faces. Academic Press, London.
• Ekman, P. (1973). Darwin and facial expression. Academic Press, New York.
• Gould, S. J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. W. W. Norton and Company, New York.
• Zebrowitz, L. A. (1997). Reading faces. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado

See also physiognomy; skull.

noun

1. The front surface of the head: countenance, feature (often used in plural), muzzle, visage. Informal mug. Slang kisser, map, pan, puss. See precede/follow.
2. A disposition of the facial features that conveys meaning, feeling, or mood: aspect, cast, countenance, expression, look, visage. See express.
3. A facial contortion indicating displeasure, disgust, or pain: grimace, moue, mouth, pout. Informal mug. See express.
4. An outward appearance: aspect, countenance, look, physiognomy, surface, visage. See surface/depth.
5. The level of credit or respect at which one is regarded by others: prestige, standing, status. See respect/contempt/standing.
6. The state or quality of being impudent or arrogantly self-confident: assumption, audaciousness, audacity, boldness, brashness, brazenness, cheek, cheekiness, chutzpah, discourtesy, disrespect, effrontery, familiarity, forwardness, gall¹, impertinence, impudence, impudency, incivility, insolence, nerve, nerviness, overconfidence, pertness, presumptuousness, pushiness, rudeness, sassiness, sauciness. Informal brass, crust, sauce, uppishness, uppityness. See attitude/good attitude/bad attitude/neutral attitude, courtesy/discourtesy.
7. The forward outer surface of a building: façade, front, frontage, frontal. Architecture frontispiece. See precede/follow.
8. A deceptive outward appearance: cloak, color, coloring, cover, disguise, disguisement, façade, false colors, front, gloss, guise, mask, masquerade, pretense, pretext, semblance, show, veil, veneer, window-dressing. Slang put-on. See show/hide.
9. The outer layer of an object: surface, top. See surface/depth.
10. The marked outer surface of an instrument: dial. See precede/follow.

verb

1. To have the face or front turned in a specific direction: front, look (on or upon). See precede/follow.
2. To confront boldly and courageously: beard, brave, challenge, dare, defy, front. Idioms: fly in the face of, snap one's fingers at, stand up to, thumb one's nose at. See resist/yield.
3. To meet face-to-face, especially defiantly: accost, confront, encounter, front. See meet.
4. To come up against: confront, encounter, meet¹, run into. See meet.
5. To furnish with a covering of a different material: clad, cover, sheathe, side, skin. See surface/depth.

Idioms beginning with face:
face up
face the music
face up to
face with

See also at face value; blue in the face; brave face; do an about-face; egg on one's face; feed one's face; fly in the face of; hide one's face; in someone's face; in the face of; in your face; keep a straight face; laugh out of the other side of one's mouth (face); long face; look someone in the face; lose face; make a face; on the face of it; plain as day (the nose on your face); poker face; put one's face on; red in the face; save face; set one's face against; show one's face; slap in the face; stare in the face; stuff one's face; talk one's arm off (until blue in the face); throw in someone's face; to someone's face.

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n

Definition: front of something; expression, exterior
Antonyms: back, behind, rear, reverse, underside

n

Definition: pretense
Antonyms: character, personality, shyness, timidity

v

Definition: be opposite; look at
Antonyms: back, turn away

v

Definition: come up against situation
Antonyms: hide, retreat, run, withdraw

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n

The front of the head from the chin to the brow, including the skin and muscles and structures of the forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and jaw.

v. (of a soldier) turn in a particular direction: the men had faced about to the front.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on face, visit Britannica.com.

Certain physical features are persistently, and irrationally, seen as clues to inner character: a high domed forehead indicating intelligence, a receding chin stupidity and cowardice, a jutting jaw bad temper, close-set eyes dishonesty, thick lips sensuality, etc. The size of a man's nose and a woman's mouth are said to correspond to that of their sexual organs—sometimes seriously, often in jest.

Some minor forms of fortune-telling were based on the face. The presence and position of moles and dimples was considered significant; E. M. Wright collected the following predictions of poverty or wealth, of which the first two were still known in 1958:

A dimple in your cheek,
Your living to seek
(Yorkshire)

A dimple in your chin,
You'll have your living brought in
(Yorkshire)

If you've a mole above your chin
You'll never be beholden to your kin
(Shropshire)

and also a Lancashire belief that a mole on the side of the nose was a sign that the Devil has marked you for his own (Wright, 1913: 224). Others reported that ‘it is the opinion of nurses that babies who have dimples have short tongues, and will lisp’ (N&Q 5s:9 (1878), 466).

See also EARS, EYEBROWS, EYELASH, EYES, MOLES, MOUTH, NOSE.Opie and Tatem, 1989: 119, 288; Lean, 1903: ii. 1. 284-5.

1. The exposed surface of a wall, masonry unit, or sheet of material. 2. The surface of a unit designed to be exposed, as in finished masonry, or plywood having one side which is finished.
3. The broad surface of a board, timber, or panel.
4. The exposed vertical surface of an arch.
5. The striking surface of a hammer. 6. During a construction operation in a tunnel, the surface being excavated.
7. To install a surface layer of one material on another, as to face a concrete block wall with brick.

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This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

The external appearance or surface of anything; that which is readily observable by a spectator. The words contained in a document in their plain or obvious meaning without regard to external evidence or facts.

The term is applied most frequently in business law to mean the apparent meaning of a contract, paper, bill, bond, record, or other such legal document. A document might appear to be valid on its face, but circumstances may modify or explain it, and its meaning or validity can be altered.

1. the anterior aspect of the head from the forehead to the chin, inclusive.
2. any presenting aspect or surface.

• f. fly — Musca autumnalis, a vector for infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis in the USA.
• f. louse — linognathus ovillus.
• f. mask — used in the semi-open method of anesthesia which ensures that all of the inspired air and gas passes through a mask and is exited to the atmosphere. Several patent masks are available for use in animals, e.g. Cox and Schimmelbush masks.

IN BRIEF: The front part of the head.

Beauty is not in the face; Beauty is a light in the heart. — Kahlil Gibran, (1883-1931), Lebanese mystical poet, philosopher and painter.

Quotes:

"Tom's great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped face -- as if hung on a scaffold of heavy private brooding; and thought." - Virginia Woolf

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." - Oscar Wilde

"This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat." - Walt Whitman

"Clowns wear a face that's painted intentionally on them so they appear to be happy or sad. What kind of mask are you wearing today?" - Source Unknown

"The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness." - Source Unknown

"God had given you one face, and you make yourself another. [Hamlet]" - William Shakespeare

See more famous quotes about Faces

If we see our own face in a dream, it can represent concerns about our self-image and how others see us. The dream also could be drawing on associations with common idioms, such as "to lose face," "face the facts," "face the music," "poker face," and "face value."

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This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - ansigt, forside, overflade, pålydende
v. tr. - trodse, se i øjnene, stå over for, vende forsiden mod
v. intr. - vende sig, vende ansigtet mod

idioms:

• face cream    ansigtscreme
• face down    trodse, se i øjnene
• face facts    se fakta i øjnene
• face the consequences    tage konsekvenserne
• face the music    tage skraldet
• face to face    ansigt til ansigt
• face up to    se i øjnene
• face value    pålydende
• face with    forsyne med, beklæde, belægge
• in the face of    over for, trods
• make faces    lave ansigter
• pull faces    skære grimasser
• save face    redde ansigt
• to his face    direkte

Nederlands (Dutch)
onder ogen zien, (onverschrokken) tegemoet treden, bekleden of beleggen, zomen, zich wenden naar, schuren, geconfronteerd worden met, bepaalde richting opdraaien, speelkaart naar boven omdraaien, het spel met een face-off beginnen, gezicht, aangezicht, façade, make-up, (zelf) vertrouwen, brutaliteit, (voor)zijde/-kant, prestige, persoon, gezichtsuitdrukking, buitenkant (figuurlijk), wijzerplaat rood aanlopen voor de voeten werpen

Français (French)
n. - visage, face, (fig) face/visage de, (Géol) face, face (d'une pierre précieuse), surface (de la planète), recto (d'un document), (Imprim) ¯il
v. tr. - regarder, donner sur, faire face à, (Imprim, Édit) être face à, être orienté (un bâtiment), se trouver face à, se retrouver face à (une équipe), affronter, devoir faire (qch), se voir contraint de payer (une amende), se trouver confronté à, être contraint de prendre/de faire, risquer, (Constr) revêtir, (Cout) mettre des parements/des revers à
v. intr. - regarder, être tourné vers, donner sur, être (de face/de dos)

idioms:

• be faced with    se trouver confronté à, être face à (une décision), devoir faire, être devant la (perspective)
• face cream    crème pour le visage
• face down    battre (qn), être opposé à (qn), (US) défier du regard
• face down    être à plat ventre
• face facts    affronter la réalité
• face off    (Sport) remettre en jeu (hockey sur glace), (US) être confronté à qn
• face the consequences    accepter/faire face aux conséquences
• face the music    affronter l'orage
• face to face    se retrouver face à, être assis face à face, (rencontrer) qn en face-à-face, (dire qch à qn) en face, (mettre deux personnes ) en présence
• face up    être sur le dos
• face up to    affronter
• face value    valeur nominale, (fig) apparence, apparence trompeuse, (prendre qch) au pied de la lettre, (prendre qch) pour argent comptant
• get out of someone's face    partir, cesser d'harceler qn
• in face of    face à, devant, en présence de
• in one's face    à la figure de (qn)
• in the face of    à la face de, (être) face à, en dépit de, (être) devant (un danger, une opposition)
• make faces    faire des grimaces, grimacer
• off one's face    en son absence
• on the face of it    à première vue
• pull faces    faire des grimaces
• put one's face on    se maquiller (fam)
• save face    sauver la face
• to someone's face    en face de qn

Deutsch (German)
n. - Gesicht, Zifferblatt, Vorderseite, Wand
v. - sich zuwenden, gegenübertreten, ins Auge sehen, verkleiden

idioms:

• be faced with    gegenüber stehen
• face cream    Gesichtscreme
• face down    mit dem Gesicht od. der Vorderseite nach unten
• face facts    sich den Fakten stellen
• face off    Gegenüberstellung, die, Bully, das
• face the consequences    die Folgen tragen
• face the music    (slang) die Suppe auslöffeln
• face to face    Angesicht zu Angesicht, gegenüber
• face up    auf dem Rücken
• face up to    ins Auge sehen
• face value    Nennwert
• get out of someone's face    verschwinde! (ugs)
• in face of    trotz, vor
• in one's face    vor der Nase, ins Gesicht
• in the face of    trotz
• make faces    das Gesicht zu Grimassen verziehen
• off one's face    besoffen sein, einen in der Krone haben (salopp)
• on the face of it    dem Anschein nach
• pull faces    Grimassen schneiden
• put one's face on    sich anmalen (ugs.)
• save face    das Gesicht wahren
• to someone's face    jdm. etwas ins Gesicht sagen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - πρόσωπο, φάτσα, μούρη, ύφος, έκφραση (προσώπου), μορφασμός (κν. γκριμάτσα), φυσιογνωμία, δίσκος, πλάκα (ρολογιού), επιφάνεια (γης), πρόσοψη (κν. φάτσα), γόητρο, κύρος
v. - αντιμετωπίζω (ευθαρσώς), αντικρίζω, στρέφω (προς), γυρίζω, βλέπω (προς), έχω θέα (προς)

idioms:

• face cream    καλλυντική κρέμα προσώπου
• face down    μπρούμυτα, πρηνηδόν
• face facts    βλέπω τα πράγματα όπως είναι
• face the consequences    αντιμετωπίζω τις συνέπειες
• face the music    ακούω τα σκολιανά μου, αναλαμβάνω την ευθύνη των πράξεών μου
• face to face    πρόσωπο με πρόσωπο, τετ-α-τετ
• face up to    αντιμετωπίζω ευθαρσώς
• face value    (οικον.) ονομαστική αξία
• face with    παρουσιάζω
• in the face of    ενώπιον, μπροστά σε
• look someone in the face    κοιτάζω κάποιον κατά πρόσωπο
• make faces    κάνω γκριμάτσες
• pull faces    κάνω (κοροϊδευτικές) γκριμάτσες
• save face    διασώζω το γόητρο/κύρος μου
• to his face    κατάμουτρα

Italiano (Italian)
far fronte a, fronteggiare, faccia, viso, volto, aspetto, aria, prestigio, quadrante

idioms:

• become red in the face    arrossire
• face cream    crema per il viso
• face down    con la faccia in giù
• face facts    far fronte ai fatti
• face the music    affrontare la realtà
• face to face    faccia a faccia
• face up to    far fronte a, andare incontro, fronteggiare
• face value    valore nominale
• face with    mettere di fronte a
• in the face of    di fronte a, a dispetto di
• lose one's face    far brutta figura
• make faces    fare smorfie, fare le boccacce
• pull faces    fare le boccacce, fare smorfie
• save face    salvare le apparenze, salvarsi la faccia
• throw in someone's face    rinfacciare
• to his face    chiaro e tondo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - face (f), superfície (f)
v. - encarar, estar voltado para

idioms:

• become red in the face    enrubescer
• face cream    creme (m) facial
• face down    estar com a cabeça ou o rosto para baixo, encarar ou vencer com coragem
• face facts    encarar os fatos
• face the music    encarar uma situação
• face to face    cara a cara
• face up to    enfrentar com coragem
• face value    valor nominal (Com.)
• face with    confrontar
• in the face of    diante de, apesar de
• lose one's face    perder o prestígio
• make faces    desaprovar
• pull faces    fazer caretas engraçadas
• save face    salvar as aparências
• throw in someone's face    jogar na cara de alguém
• to his face    na presença dele

Русский (Russian)
быть обращенным к, встречать смело, отделывать, лицо, внешность, аспект, циферблат, престиж

idioms:

• become red in the face    краснеть
• face cream    крем для лица
• face down    запугать, осадить
• face facts    считаться с фактами
• face the music    храбро встречать трудности, расплачиваться
• face to face    лицом к лицу
• face up to    встречать смело, признать откровенно, справиться
• face value    видимая ценность
• face with    оказаться перед
• in the face of    вопреки, под угрозой, несмотря
• lose one's face    терять лицо, терять престиж
• make faces    строить гримасы
• pull faces    строить гримасы
• save face    сохранить лицо, сохранить престиж
• throw in someone's face    бросить в лицо, сказать прямо
• to his face    прямо

Español (Spanish)
n. - cara, rostro, semblante, aspecto, cariz, prestigio, faz, superficie, esfera
v. tr. - volverse o mirar hacia, hacer cara o frente, encarar
v. intr. - volver la cara, dar frente

idioms:

• be faced with    enfrentarse a
• face cream    crema de belleza, crema para el cutis
• face down    boca abajo, hacer frente a
• face facts    enfrentarse con los hechos, hacer frente, afrontar
• face off    una confrontación abierta
• face the consequences    aceptar las consecuencias
• face the music    afrontar las consecuencias
• face to face    cara a cara, frente a frente
• face up    enfrentarse con, hacer frente, con la cara hacia arriba
• face up to    enfrentarse con, hacer frente, soportar valerosamente
• face value    valor nominal
• get out of someone's face    parar de molestar o incomodar a alguien
• in face of    enfrentarse a algo, confrontado con, a pesar de, haciendo frente a
• in one's face    en tu cara, abiertamente
• in the face of    a pesar de, haciendo frente a
• make faces    hacer muecas
• off one's face    borracho o drogado
• on the face of it    a primera vista
• pull faces    hacer muecas
• put one's face on    ponerse maquillaje
• save face    salvar las apariencias, evitar una humillación
• to someone's face    hablar, etc. abiertamente

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ansikte, uppsyn, utseende, yta, framsida på byggnad (även fasad), urtavla, tryckyta på typ (typogr.)
v. - (modigt) möta, vara beredd på

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
脸, 正面, 面容, 面对, 承认, 朝, 向

idioms:

• face cream    面霜
• face down    正面向下
• face facts    面对事实
• face the consequences    面对后果
• face the music    勇于承担责任, 临危不惧
• face to face    面对面, 面对着面对面, 面对着
• face up to    勇敢地对付, 面对事实
• face value    字面意义, 表面价值, 面额, 票面价值
• face with    面临
• in the face of    面对
• make faces    扮鬼脸
• pull faces    扮鬼脸
• save face    扳回颜面, 保留面子
• to his face    当着某人的面, 直率地

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 臉, 正面, 面容
v. tr. - 面對, 承認, 朝
v. intr. - 朝, 向

idioms:

• face cream    面霜
• face down    正面向下
• face facts    面對事實
• face the consequences    面對後果
• face the music    勇於承擔責任, 臨危不懼
• face to face    面對面, 面對著面對面, 面對著
• face up to    勇敢地對付, 面對事實
• face value    字面意義, 表面價值, 面額, 票面價值
• face with    面臨
• in the face of    面對
• make faces    扮鬼臉
• pull faces    扮鬼臉
• save face    扳回顏面, 保留面子
• to his face    當著某人的面, 直率地

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 얼굴, 표정, (기구기계)쓰는 쪽, 겉모양
v. tr. - 마주보다, 면하다, 대항하다, 겉치장하다
v. intr. - (건물방향으로) 향하다, 방향 전환하다

idioms:

• face down    엎드려서 머리를 숙이고
• face up to    두려움 없이 대들다
• face with    ~와 마주 대하여
• in the face of    ~의 정면에서
• make faces    얼굴을 찌푸리다
• to his face    맞대놓고, 눈앞에서

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 顔, 顔つき, 外観, 表面, 正面, 面の皮, 面目
v. - 面する, 直面する, 迫る, 縁取りをする, 上塗りする, 向く, 化粧張りする

idioms:

• face cream    美顔用化粧クリーム
• face down    顔を下げて, 表を下にして
• face facts    事実に直面する
• face the music    進んで責任を取る
• face to face    面と向かって, 直面して
• face up to    承認する, 真正面から迫る
• face value    額面, 額面上の価値
• face with    と向かいあう
• in the face of    …とまともに, ものともせずに, …にもかかわらず
• in your face    表情で, 顔に
• make faces    顰めっ面をする

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) وجه (فعل) يواجه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮פנים, פרצוף, הופעה חיצונית, הצד המתפקד של מכשיר וכו', הערכה‬
v. tr. - ‮התייצב מול, כיסה, היה מול, התעמת עם, ציפה‬
v. intr. - ‮הסתובב או גרם להסתובב‬

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face painting a lambs face	Face Towel
The North Face	Cosmetics Face