Word.ws English Dictionary

put on a brave face

put on a brave face verb: to behave in a brave or stoic manner.

Verb

put on a brave face (third-person singular simple present puts on a brave face, present participle putting on a brave face, simple past and past participle put on a brave face)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To behave in a brave or stoic manner.
    • [You] put on a brave face, but the inside of your mind is on overdrive and your heart is full of fear and worry. You suddenly look at the people around you and see their pain so clearly.(Can we date this quote?), Jeanine Patten-Coble, Struck by Hope: The True Story of Answering God’s Call and the Creation of Little Pink Houses of Hope, Read the Spirit Books, →ISBN

Forms of put on a brave face

third-person singular presentputs on a brave face
present participleputting on a brave face
past participleput on a brave face
pastput on a brave face

Questions about put on a brave face

What does put on a brave face mean?
Put on a brave face means to behave in a brave or stoic manner.
What part of speech is put on a brave face?
Put on a brave face is a verb.
What is the past tense of put on a brave face?
The past tense of put on a brave face is put on a brave face.

Words near put on a brave face in the dictionary

  1. put lie to
  2. put lipstick on a pig
  3. put new wine in old bottles
  4. put off
  5. put on
  6. put on a brave face
  7. put on a bus
  8. put on a clinic
  9. put on a pedestal
  10. put on airs
  11. put on dog

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put on a brave 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:

Cite this entry: “put on a brave face.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_on_a_brave_face. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.