Word.ws English Dictionary

on the face of it

on the face of it prepositional phrase: seemingly; to all appearances; as far as can be seen or determined without deeper investigation or analysis.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Seemingly; to all appearances; as far as can be seen or determined without deeper investigation or analysis.
    • On the face of it, his case seemed hopeless. But appearances can be deceptive.

on the face of it meaning in Malayalam and Arabic

on the face of it in Malayalam

to all appearances, ostensibly, to all intents and purposes
പ്രഥമദൃഷ്ടിയിൽ, പ്രഥമദൃഷ്ട്യാ, പ്രഥമനോട്ടത്തിൽ, പ്രകടമായി, കാഴ്ചയിൽ, എടുത്തുകാട്ടാവുന്ന വിധം

on the face of it in Arabic

as far as can be seen or determined
عَلَى مَا يَبْدُوْ ʕalā mā yabduw, لِأَوَّلِ وَهْلَةٍ liʔawwali wahlatin

Synonyms of on the face of it

Questions about on the face of it

What does on the face of it mean?
On the face of it means seemingly; to all appearances; as far as can be seen or determined without deeper investigation or analysis.
What is on the face of it in Malayalam?
On the face of it in Malayalam is പ്രഥമദൃഷ്ടിയിൽ, പ്രഥമദൃഷ്ട്യാ, പ്രഥമനോട്ടത്തിൽ. See On the face of it meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is on the face of it?
On the face of it is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the face of it in the dictionary

  1. on the earie
  2. on the edge
  3. on the edge of
  4. on the edge of one's seat
  5. on the face of
  6. on the face of it
  7. on the face of the earth
  8. on the fence
  9. on the fiddle
  10. on the flat
  11. on the flip side

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the face of it (page history and authors); on the face of it (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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-on the face of it.ogg.

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