Word.ws English Dictionary

in the face of

in the face of preposition: when confronted with.

Preposition

in the face of

  1. When confronted with.
    • in the face of growing pressure, the company changed its logo
    • Laugh in the face of adversity.
  2. Despite; against; contrary to.
    • They declare ringing confirmation for their theories even in the face of feeble data.1999 March 20, Natalie Angiers, The Guardian
    • His daughters were serious. In fact the elder one had joined the Communist Youth, where the kids were almost puritanical, growing up with principles in the face of the triple enemy: capitalism-imperialism-Americanocracy.2018, Vassilis Vassilikos, ... And Dreams Are Dreams
  3. (archaic) On the face of.

Words formed from in the face of

Questions about in the face of

What does in the face of mean?
In the face of means when confronted with.
What part of speech is in the face of?
In the face of is a preposition.

Words near in the face of in the dictionary

  1. in the event that
  2. in the extreme
  3. in the eye of the wind
  4. in the eyes of
  5. in the eyes of the law
  6. in the face of
  7. in the family way
  8. in the fast lane
  9. in the field
  10. in the final analysis
  11. in the first instance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the face of (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: en-au-in the face of.ogg.

Cite this entry: “in the face of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_face_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.