Word.ws English Dictionary

face down

face down is the alternative form of face-down.

Verb

face down (third-person singular simple present faces down, present participle facing down, simple past and past participle faced down)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To confront; to abash by stern looks.
    • That old philosopher grew cross, / Who could not tell what motion was; / Because he walked against his will, / He faced men down, that he stood still.1718, Mat[thew] Prior, “Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind”, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: […] Jacob Tonson […], and John Barber […], →OCLC
    • An already febrile atmosphere within the ground before the start had been stoked still further when France's players formed an arrow formation to face down the haka, and then advanced slowly over halfway as the capacity crowd roared.2011 October 23, Tom Fordyce, “2011 Rugby World Cup final: New Zealand 8-7 France”, in BBC Sport
  2. (archaic, transitive) To persist in confronting impudently.

Meaning of face-down

Adjective

face-down (not comparable)

  1. Having the face, front or surface positioned downward.
    • the face-down cards in a game

See all 3 meanings of face-down

Forms of face down

third-person singular presentfaces down
present participlefacing down
past participlefaced down
pastfaced down

Questions about face down

What does face down mean?
Face down means to confront; to abash by stern looks.
What is face down the alternative form of?
Face down is the alternative form of face-down.
What part of speech is face down?
Face down is a verb.
What is the past tense of face down?
The past tense of face down is faced down.

Words near face down in the dictionary

  1. face coverings
  2. face cream
  3. face creams
  4. face diaper
  5. face diapers
  6. face down
  7. face facts
  8. face first
  9. face flannel
  10. face flannels
  11. face flies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: face down (page history and authors); face-down (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-face down.ogg.

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