| E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898. |
| | | Face. | | |
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(Latin, facies.) | 1 |
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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.” | 2 |
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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. | 3 |
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| “Dead is the noble Badëbec, |
| Who had a face like a rebec.” | |
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Rabelais: Pantagruel, book ii. 4. |
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 Badebec was the mother of Gargantua, and died in childbirth. | 4 |
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A wry face. The features drawn awry, expressive of distaste. | 5 |
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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 | 6 |
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“Of course, it is all right; if you had not drawn such a long face I should never have doubted.”—Dr. Cupid. |
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To fly in the face of … . To oppose violently and unreasonably: to set at defiance rashly. | 7 |
To put a good face on the matter. To make the best of a bad matter: to bear up under something disagreeable; “vultu malum dissimul re;” “in adversis vultum secundœ fortunœ ger re.” | 8 |
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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. | 9 |
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