whiteface
whiteface noun: makeup that makes the face appear white.
Noun
whiteface (countable and uncountable, plural whitefaces)
- Makeup that makes the face appear white.
- Whiteface is sometimes worn by clowns and mimes, or in the Gothic subculture.
- Any bird of the genus Aphelocephala.
- A Hereford cow.
- Any dragonfly of the genus Leucorrhinia.
- A person of European descent. (See usage notes.)
- Craig has gotten himself entree into a dangerous Chinatown card game, where he is playing the role of the malleable whiteface, the unlucky Irishman known as Mickey in order to infiltrate the drug-dealing operations of Asian gang members.2007 December 10, Janet Maslin, “Cop's Wife Spiraling Out of Control in Chicago”, in New York Times
- A traditional clown who ranks above the auguste.
Synonyms of whiteface
Forms of whiteface
| plural | whitefaces |
|---|
Origin of whiteface
From white + face.
Questions about whiteface
- What does whiteface mean?
- Whiteface means makeup that makes the face appear white.
- What part of speech is whiteface?
- Whiteface is a noun.
- What is the plural of whiteface?
- The plural of whiteface is whitefaces.
Words near whiteface in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whiteface (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-whiteface.ogg.
Cite this entry: “whiteface.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whiteface. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
