Word.ws English Dictionary

give face

give face verb: to honor; to pay respect.

Verb (1)

give face (third-person singular simple present gives face, present participle giving face, simple past gave face, past participle given face)

  1. (idiomatic) To honor; to pay respect.
    • We gave face to one another.2000, Ko-lin Chin, Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise, and Ethnicity, page 200
    • While she gave face to the director, his subordinates, and her colleagues, she had no face left to herself.2001, Wenshan Jia, The remaking of the Chinese character and identity in the 21st Century, page 135

Verb (2)

give face (third-person singular simple present gives face, present participle giving face, simple past gave face, past participle given face)

  1. (idiomatic, slang) To perform cunnilingus.
    • Boys gave face, girls gave head.2011, J. Darroll Hall, The Lollipop Book, page 107
    • Frank had pushed her pants down to reveal her pink pussy and was giving her face. She was in ecstasy.2001, Letters to Penthouse XIV, page 107

Verb (3)

give face (third-person singular simple present gives face, present participle giving face, simple past gave face, past participle given face)

  1. To confront.
    • He has been shot twice before, once when he was sixteen, that was some serious shit, sort of giving face to some dude, and the mother pulled out a.38 and boom, just like it was but a little more downtalk.1997, Scott Turow, The Laws of Our Fathers

Forms of give face

third-person singular presentgives face
present participlegiving face
pastgave face
past participlegiven face

Origin of give face

First used in the late 19th century (most likely in the colonial Hong Kong), a calque of dialectal Cantonese 畀面 (bei2 min2).

Compare give head.

Questions about give face

What does give face mean?
Give face means to honor; to pay respect.
What part of speech is give face?
Give face is a verb.
What is the past tense of give face?
The past tense of give face is gave face.

Words near give face in the dictionary

  1. give cry
  2. give curry
  3. give dap
  4. give dome
  5. give ear
  6. give face
  7. give forth
  8. give gray hair to
  9. give grey hair to
  10. give ground
  11. give hat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give face (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-give face.ogg.

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