Word.ws English Dictionary

facer

Syllables: fac·er/ˈfeɪ̯.sə/US/ˈfeɪ̯.səɹ/

facer noun: a blow in the face, as in boxing.

Noun (1)

facer (plural facers)

  1. (obsolete, slang) A blow in the face, as in boxing.
    • I made £150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the...1856 May, Thomas Hughes, quoting Charles Kingsley, “Prefatory Memoir”, in Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet. […], London: Macmillan and Co., published 1876, →OCLC, page lvi
  2. (broadly, slang) An unexpected and stunning blow or defeat.
    • “You're such a snob,” she said, with a provoking laugh; coming from the family he was thought to be snobbish about, this was a bit of a facer.2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 1, in The Line of Beauty […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 6
    • He [Joschka Fischer] was for Nato, looser visa rules and—quite the facer for his pacifist colleagues—the bombing of Serbia.2024 January 27, Janan Ganesh, “Could there be a liberal demagogue?”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 21
  3. (slang) A serving of alcoholic drink; a dram.
    • Dory[…]poured a little whisky into a glass, and grew reminiscent. “I had a facer myself this morning before I came down,” he said.

Noun (2)

facer (plural facers)

  1. (obsolete, slang) One who faces; one who puts on a false show; a bold-faced person.

Proper noun capitalized: Facer

Facer (plural Facers)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of facer

Forms of facer

Noun
pluralfacers
Proper noun
pluralFacers

Origin of facer

From face (noun) + -er (relational suffix).

From face (verb) + -er (agentive nominal suffix).

Words that rhyme with facer

Questions about facer

What does facer mean?
Facer means a blow in the face, as in boxing.
What part of speech is facer?
Facer can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce facer?
Facer is pronounced /ˈfeɪ̯.sə/ (UK).
What is the plural of facer?
The plural of facer is facers.

Words near facer in the dictionary

  1. faceplates
  2. faceprint
  3. faceprinted
  4. faceprinting
  5. faceprints
  6. facer
  7. facerape
  8. facereader
  9. facereaders
  10. faceroll
  11. facers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: facer (page history and authors); Facer (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-facer.wav.

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