Word.ws English Dictionary

face facts

face facts verb: to accept what is true, especially when it is undesirable.

Verb

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

  1. To accept what is true, especially when it is undesirable.
    • The Home Member said they could not refuse to face facts and Mr. S. R, Das, Law Member, said the partial co-operation which had been received from the Swarajists in the House had been forced out of them by their minority position there.1828, The Indian Year Book, volumes 12-17, page 765
    • Now this doubtness is an unhappy state of affairs to the lover of the steam locomotive, but we cannot, like the proverbial ostrich, bury our heads in the sand and refuse to face facts.1950 January, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 13

Examples of face facts in a sentence

  • Not long after a particularly aggressive soccer game in my youth, when I went down hard with a severe injury, I had to face facts: my soccer days were over.2014, Joe RoosEvans, Here's to the Good Life, page 32:
  • “You must face facts,” he said, taking a step toward her.2017, Julia Quinn, The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband: A Bridgertons Prequel, page 15:

Forms of face facts

third-person singular presentfaces facts
present participlefacing facts
past participlefaced facts
pastfaced facts
alternative formface the facts

Questions about face facts

What does face facts mean?
Face facts means to accept what is true, especially when it is undesirable.
How do you use face facts in a sentence?
Not long after a particularly aggressive soccer game in my youth, when I went down hard with a severe injury, I had to face facts: my soccer days were over.
What part of speech is face facts?
Face facts is a verb.
What is the past tense of face facts?
The past tense of face facts is faced facts.

Words near face facts in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: face facts (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.

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