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Face

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(Latin, facies.)

A brazen face. A bold, defiant look. A brazen-faced person means one with an impudent, audacious look, especially in a bad cause. Brass metaphorically is generally used in a bad or deprecatory sense, as “You have plenty of brass” [impudence], “I admire your brass.”

A rebec face (French, visage de rebec). An ugly, grotesque face, like that which used to be cut on the upper part of a rebec or three-stringed fiddle.

Dead is the noble Badëbec,

Who had a face like a rebec.”


Rabelais: Pantagruel, book ii. 4.

⁂ Badebec was the mother of Gargantua, and died in childbirth.

A wry face. The features drawn awry, expressive of distaste.

To draw a long face. To look dissatisfied or sorrowful, in which case the mouth is drawn down at the corners, the eyes are dejected, and the face elongated


“Of course, it is all right; if you had not drawn such a long face I should never have doubted.”—Dr. Cupid.

To fly in the face of … . To oppose violently and unreasonably: to set at defiance rashly.

To put a good face on the matter. To make the best of a bad matter: to bear up under something disagreeable; “vultu malum dissimulāre;” “in adversis vultum secundœ fortunœ gerĕre.”

To set one’s face against [something]. To oppose it; to resist its being done. The expression of the face shows the state of the inclination of a person’s mind.

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Fabian Soldiers
Fabian Tactics or Policyi.e. delay
Fabianism
Fabila’s sad Fate
Fabius
Fables
Fabliaux
Fabricius
Fabulinus
Fabulous Isles
Face
Face to Face
Faces
Face
Faced
Faced
Face-card or Faced-card
Facilë Princeps
Facings
Façon de Parler
Faction