Word.ws English Dictionary

facepalming

facepalming is the present participle and gerund of facepalm.

Meaning of facepalm

Verb

facepalm (third-person singular simple present facepalms, present participle facepalming, simple past and past participle facepalmed)

  1. To bring the palm of one’s hand to one’s face as an expression of mixed humor and disbelief, disgust or shame; for example, when one is caught off-guard with a particularly bad pun.
    • Christie blinked, then *looked* at Steven. “Do you have any idea what might be different?” “Um... No? Christie facepalmed. “Well, her hair was red this morning, right? It's blonde now. You figure it out.”1996 May 15, Jon Robertson, “SG: Remains #2 (2/2)”, in bit.listserv.superguy (Usenet), retrieved 07 Feb 2017, message-ID <199605160138.VAA00171@datasys.net>
  2. To bring one’s face down to one’s cupped hand or hands.

See all 3 meanings of facepalm

Questions about facepalming

What is facepalming the present participle and gerund of?
Facepalming is the present participle and gerund of facepalm.

Words near facepalming in the dictionary

  1. Facepage
  2. facepaint
  3. facepaints
  4. facepalm
  5. facepalmed
  6. facepalming
  7. facepalms
  8. facepalmy
  9. facepaw
  10. facepawed
  11. facepawing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: facepalming (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.

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