Word.ws English Dictionary

face-palm

face-palm is the alternative spelling of facepalm.

Meaning of facepalm

Noun

facepalm (plural facepalms)

  1. A gesture of bringing one or both palms to the face, with various interpretations including exasperation, chagrin, frustration, embarrassment (one's own or vicarious), etc.
    • [Cue: William Tell Overture] [sound of Frank Zappa's “San Ber'dino” being played on Japanese instruments] [Kevin (the Muse): “Wargh! It SAID _William Tell!”] [Cantata11 (walking up with a koto): “Oof. Sorry. It's just that the girls had gotten warmed up to the other thingy...”] [Kevin: “William...1996 June 6, Amy Borden, “SG: Slackers Anonymous #14”, in bit.listserv.superguy (Usenet), retrieved 07 Feb 2017, message-ID <Pine.SGI.3.91.960606231711.21356A-100000@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>

See all 3 meanings of facepalm

Forms of face-palm

Noun
pluralface-palms
Verb
third-person singular presentface-palms
present participleface-palming
past participleface-palmed
pastface-palmed

Questions about face-palm

What is face-palm the alternative spelling of?
Face-palm is the alternative spelling of facepalm.

Words near face-palm in the dictionary

  1. face-off
  2. face-off circle
  3. face-off circles
  4. face-offs
  5. face-on
  6. face-palm
  7. face-palms
  8. face-plant
  9. face-planted
  10. face-planting
  11. face-plants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: face-palm (page history and authors); facepalm (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “face-palm.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/face-palm. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.