Word.ws English Dictionary

giving face

giving face is the present participle and gerund of give face.

Meaning of give face

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

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

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

Questions about giving face

What is giving face the present participle and gerund of?
Giving face is the present participle and gerund of give face.

Words near giving face in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: giving face (page history and authors); 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.

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