Word.ws English Dictionary

facing down

facing down is the present participle of face down.

Meaning 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
  2. (archaic, transitive) To persist in confronting impudently.

Questions about facing down

What is facing down the present participle of?
Facing down is the present participle of face down.

Words near facing down in the dictionary

  1. facilize
  2. facilized
  3. facilizes
  4. facilizing
  5. facing
  6. facing down
  7. facing facts
  8. facing off
  9. facing out
  10. facing points
  11. facing the facts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: facing 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.

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