Word.ws English Dictionary

face up to

face up to verb: to confront a condition or situation, typically one that is unpleasant or uncomfortable.

Verb

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

  1. To confront a condition or situation, typically one that is unpleasant or uncomfortable.
    • We must all face up to the fact that we're not getting any younger.
    • I can't seem to face up to the facts / I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax1977, Talking Heads, “Psycho Killer”, in Talking Heads: 77

Synonyms of face up to

Forms of face up to

third-person singular presentfaces up to
present participlefacing up to
past participlefaced up to
pastfaced up to

Questions about face up to

What does face up to mean?
Face up to means to confront a condition or situation, typically one that is unpleasant or uncomfortable.
What part of speech is face up to?
Face up to is a verb.
What is the past tense of face up to?
The past tense of face up to is faced up to.

Words near face up to in the dictionary

  1. face the music
  2. face time
  3. face to face
  4. face turn
  5. face up
  6. face up to
  7. face validities
  8. face validity
  9. face value
  10. face values
  11. face washer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: face up to (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 up to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/face_up_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.