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Facial expression   /fˈeɪʃəl ɪksprˈɛʃən/   Listen
Facial expression

noun
1.
A gesture executed with the facial muscles.  Synonym: facial gesture.
2.
The feelings expressed on a person's face.  Synonyms: aspect, expression, face, look.  "A look of triumph" , "An angry face"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Facial expression" Quotes from Famous Books



... actor registered the deepness of his love by thrusting his chin forward and staring unblinkingly over John's head. It was an effective piece of facial expression, John thought, as the actor's eyes were as soft as a fawn's. Photographs of Richard Barthelmess and John Barrymore in similar poses came ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... contented murmurs. The performance was repeated half a dozen times. Each time the ankles retreated the baby yelled. Finally, for once at the end of her patience, "Aunt Susan" leaned forward and addressed the mother, whose facial expression throughout had shown a complete mental detachment ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... ardent and conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear testimony. Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial expression. "I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined, repeat the most violent passages of Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... and drove home, thinking of many things and looking even more than usually detached. He had remarked the facial expression of the short and stout man as he had got into his cab and he was turning over mentally his own exact knowledge of the views the business mind would have held and what the business countenance would have decently covered if he—Coombe—had explained in ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... his indignation and disgust, with the fiercest facial expression and the most menacing gesticulations, he ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... in a literature, and the passive drifting together will pass over into a phase of more or less conscious and intentional organization. The segregating groups will develop fashions of costume, types of manners and bearing, and even, perhaps, be characterized by a certain type of facial expression. And this gives us a glimpse, an aspect of the immediate future of literature. The kingdoms of the past were little things, and above the mass of peasants who lived and obeyed and died, there was just one little culture to which all must needs conform. Literature was universal within ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... lead them by ever-heightening accessions of feeling into forgetfulness of their personal lives, and absorption in the impersonal harmony, the spiritual receptivity, from which the grand truths are visible. The actors' masks allowed only the facial expression of a single mood; and it was a single mood the dramatist aimed to produce: a unity; one great word. There could be no grave-diggers; no quizzing of Polonious; no clouds very like a whale. The whole ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... an idyllic scene was being enacted. A woolly black lamb with a particularly engaging facial expression was being hospitably entertained by all our men with the exception of the chef. They formed an admiring ring round it, taking turns in feeding it with bersim, and patting its delightfully innocent head. It was difficult to ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... heavily for its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in the explosive style of Wagner's Kundry, sometimes with something like fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody. Hers ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... and bitter. Yet he remembered, this time, to take more care of his facial expression. He met Shotwell and Proudfit coming out of the best saloon. They stopped him, complimented his clothes and his legs, asked a question or two of genuine interest, poked him in the waistband, and regretted not meeting him sooner. Proudfit suggested, with the proper ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... as tall as a calf new-born. The tail was fluffy, the coat of fur a veritable mane around the throat, the head long of muzzle and broad across the forehead with dark marks between the eyes and arching like brows above them so that the facial expression was one of almost human wisdom and wistfulness. It was a beautiful creature to watch, as its smooth trot carried it with incredible speed across the stallion's line of retreat, but Alcatraz had seen ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... a play is simply a story told by the movements of the players. But when we see a man stabbed, or a woman kissed, our curiosity is excited. We want to know something more about the people whose actions we see. This, indeed, may be roughly told by gesture and facial expression, which are themselves language; but, finally, to understand more than the barest outline of the story, we are forced to demand words. And the more we are interested in human nature the more we want to understand the thoughts, emotions, motives, characters, of the personages in ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter

... permanency, he had to resort to the deliberate exercise of imagination and wilful self-deception I have described. Now even in those cases of dual personality, though there is doubtless some change in facial expression, there is not an actual physical transformation such as Davenport's purpose required. As he had to use deliberate means to work the mental change, so he must do to accomplish the physical one. He must resort to that which in real life takes the place of fairy wands, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... The history of sculpture is in fact identified with that of idols. The Egyptians were probably the first who made any considerable advances in the execution of statues. Those which remain are rude, simple, uniform, without beauty or grace (except a certain serenity of facial expression which seems to pervade all their portraiture), but colossal and grand. Nearly two thousand years before Christ the walls of Thebes were ornamented with sculptured figures, even as the gates of Babylon were made of sculptured bronze. The dimensions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... an interesting fact, however, that this stolidity of stupidity can be easily removed. I have often heard comments on the marked change in the facial expression of those adults who learn to read the Bible. Their minds are awakened; a new light is seen in their eyes as new ideas ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... suffering from shell-shock; or the gallant stretcher-bearers, regardless of all danger, attending to the wounded and carrying them back for treatment. The sight does not grieve or shock you—only surprise is evinced by a change in facial expression. You just carry on—the shock and grief will come later. You just grit your teeth and take a fresh grip of your rifle and go forward with greater determination to strike a blow in the cause of freedom and honour. Maybe you reach your objective, your clothes sodden with ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... considered less extraordinary than he, but it was not wholly his personal appearance—for he was the handsomest man in the Boer army—which aroused the admiration of men. His voice, his eyes, his facial expression and his manner—all combined to strengthen the man's power over others. It may have been personal magnetism or a mysterious charm which he possessed—but it was the ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... Elliott thus describes the Eskimo, or Innuit, as he is sometimes called, inhabiting the far northern portions of Alaska: "The average Innuit stands about five feet seven inches in his heelless boots. He is slightly Mongolian in his complexion and facial expression. A broad face, prominent cheek-bones, a large mouth with full lips, small black eyes, prominently set in their sockets, not under a lowering brow, as in the case of true Indian faces. The nose is insignificant, and much depressed, with scarcely any bridge. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... mouth is kept partly open, the face appears lengthened, the nose is flattened by the falling in of the alae nasi, the inner angles of the eyes are drawn down, and the eyelids droop, while the whole facial expression is dull and stupid. As the respiratory difficulty is increased during sleep, the patient snores loudly, and his sleep is frequently broken by sudden night terrors. Owing to the disturbed sleep, to imperfect oxygenation of the blood, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... the other Hand, gave a correct Imitation of a Bear with a Sore Toe. His Conversation was largely made up of Grunts. He carried a Facial Expression that frightened little Children in Street Cars and took all the Starch out of sentimental Young Ladies. He seemed perpetually to carry the Hoof-Marks of a horrible Nightmare. Some said that he had been Blighted in Love and had soured on the Universe. Others imagined that ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... the weight of the attack; and then she rises, triumphant, with the terrible cry, Aux armes, citoyens! Part of her effect is gained by gesture, part by the massing of her body, but the greater part by facial expression. In the anguished appeal she does not make a sound, beyond that made by the orchestra, but the hideous din of a hundred raucous voices seems to ring in our ears. We see Felicien Rops's Vengeance come to life; ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... depends, however, on the occasion. If you are singing in a foreign language, which the audience does not understand, you make every effort to 'put it over,' to make them see what you are trying to tell them. You strive to make the song intelligible in some way. You may add facial expression and gesture, more than you would otherwise do. All this is more wearing ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... offered is that monastic education did not permit the study of the nude, and hence the monkish ignorance of figure drawing. But that is scarcely an excuse for the monstrous hands and feet and exaggerated facial expression of the miniatures. The Italian monk Angelico, in spite of his monastic limitations, succeeded in a most graceful rendering of the figure, and a charming delicacy in the forms of the hands. As in some instances the artist ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... object of this soliloquy is plain. The dramatist wished us to know the thoughts which were passing through Hamlet's mind, and it was the only way he could think of in which to do it. Of course a really good actor can often give a clue to the feelings of a character simply by facial expression. There are ways of shifting the eyebrows, distending the nostrils, and exploring the lower molars with the tongue by which it is possible to denote respectively Surprise, Defiance and Doubt. Indeed, irresolution being the keynote of Hamlet's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that 'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... observe that the conditions under which Greek art flourished developed what the Germans call "Allgemeinheit," a tendency to generalise, which was inimical to strongly marked facial expression or characterisation. The conditions of Italian art, on the other hand, favoured an opposite tendency—to particularise, to enforce detail, to emphasise the artist's own ideal or the model's quality. When the type of a Greek deity had been fixed, each successive master ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... mouth which betokens an indomitable will; and a flash in his sparkling blue eyes bears witness that he has an ominous temper of his own. But, though his personal appearance is by no means that of an Adonis, the brightness of his complexion and a certain bold frankness of facial expression preserves him from absolute ugliness. Those who know him, moreover, are aware that he possesses qualities which more than redeem his plainness of feature. Though by no means of a robust constitution, he is endowed ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... have learned that the chief quality of Leonardo da Vinci's work is his rendering of facial expression—complex, subtile expression: yet he excelled in all artistic representation;—in drawing, in composition, in color, and in the treatment of light and shade. He easily stands in the foremost rank of world painters. But, ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... Farnum did not look particularly at the Frenchman, but trusted to the boys to watch the man's face covertly. M. Lemaire, however, proved to be a good actor and a master of facial expression. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... never allowed any comrade to take his punishment for him, but he knew very well how to extricate himself from the greatest difficulties. His candor often won him some indulgence. If he happened to be punished by a timorous master, he assumed a terrible facial expression and tried to frighten him. But when, on the contrary, he found himself in the presence of a man of energy, he pleaded extenuating circumstances, and persevered until he obtained the least possible punishment. He never resented the infliction of just punishment, but ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... brown-eyed blonde, with the physical development of a woman and the facial expression of a child of twelve, cried out, "I feel as though I should swoon for joy to see that darling way she holds her hands when the leading man's making love to her—so sort ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... illuminated were those of a strongly built, handsome man of thirty, so soldierly in bearing that it needed not the buff epaulets and facings to show his captain's rank in the Continental army. Yet there was something in his facial expression that contradicted the manliness of his presence,—an irritation and querulousness that were inconsistent with his size and strength. This fretfulness increased as the moments went by without sign ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... however, more artists are found who are willing to pay this price, who are giving time and study not only to the subtle shadings of the delicate fur, but to the varying facial expression and sinuous movements of the cat. Margaret Stocks, of Munich, for example, is rapidly coming to the front as a cat painter, and some predict for her (she is still a young woman) a future equal to Madame Ronner's. Gambier Bolton's "Day Dreams" shows admirably the quality and "tumbled-ness" of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... Battista Sforza, and Galeazzo Sforza. The relief is very low, rising at no point more than half an inch above the surface of the ground, but so carefully modulated as to present a wonderful variety of light and shade, and to render the facial expression ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... mention of evil makes it impossible for me to listen or think rationally when such things are discussed. This feeling has seemed to change my whole attitude toward life and has left me without power to control my facial expression or carriage when it takes possession of me. I have been able to teach more successfully than I could hope, but it is only by cutting myself off from the friendships and pleasures incident to my life that I am able to accomplish my work. I have fought this trouble alone and will still do so if ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... his fingers out" is a mark of courtesy and esteem in one remote nation; nor is putting out the tongue a sign of contempt everywhere. Certain of the gestures of ballet still strictly conventional in England are employed outside the theatre in France. Gesture and facial expression, except so far as mechanically due to emotion, are entirely conventional, though some of the conventions are so old as to have ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"



Words linked to "Facial expression" :   light, twinkle, smiling, expression, gape, grin, leer, frown, snarl, gesture, scowl, grimace, emoticon, laugh, wink, smile, countenance, straight face, visage, motion, spark, wince, sparkle, grinning, facial gesture



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