Facial Expressions, Serious
Facial Expressions, Serious
See Also: EYE EXPRESSIONS, MISCELLANEOUS
- Face all clouds, like a man in need of physic —George Garrett
- A face as sad and featureless as a moon by day —George Garrett
- Face austere as a hermit’s —Lynne Sharon Schwartz
- Face … gloomy as an El Greco —John Fowles
Carlos Baker makes the El Greco comparison with ‘Long,’ which explains the meaning to include mood as well as physical shape.
See Also: FACIAL SHAPE
- Face grim as flu —Reynolds Price
- Face like a clenched fist —Richard Condon
- A face like a stomach cramp —Loren D. Estleman
- Face like a vinegar bottle —Erich Maria Remarque
- Face … somber as a churchman’s —Richard Ford
- Face tightened up like a charley-horse —Raymond Chandler
- Face was long, like a sheep’s —W. Somerset Maugham
The comparison is used to describe both sadness and a long-shaped face. To emphasize the psychological there’s Daphne du Maurier’s “Long and grave … like a complaining sheep.” To combine both meanings there’s this by Margaret Atwood: “Face … long and mournful, like a sheep’s, but with the large full eyes of a dog, spaniel not terrier.”
- Grim as an ideological bigot —Frank Swinnerton
- Had the face of a man suffering the awaited death of a loved one who’s terminally ill —Mario Puzo
- Had the look of a boy who had just lost his puppy to the county dogcatcher —Clive Cussler
- He [Calvin Coolidge] looks as if he’d been weaned on a pickle —Alice Roosevelt Longworth
- His long grim face, with the mouth running across its lower hem like a slipped thread in a linen sack, was as pitted as a battlefield —Cynthia Ozick
- A long sad face like a cocker spaniel —George Garrett
- Looked dismayed, like a child who’s been used to hearing the same story with the same happy ending, and now the ending has been changed —Margaret Millar
- Looked like a man being strapped into the electric chair while his wife French-kisses the D.A. in the hallway —T. Coraghessan Boyle
- Looking as if the dentist had told him he’d have to have all his teeth pulled —Ross Macdonald
- Looking as pensive as a monk in a spiritual crisis —Scott Spencer
- Looking like a broody hen —Margaret Kennedy
- (You) look like you just swallowed a bone —Charles Johnson
- Sour and gray in the face, like a man who detests the food that keeps him alive; and must yet have it —Paul Horgan
- Troubled face … like a gravel parking lot —Ken Follett,
- Wore a permanently pinched look, as if he had just bitten into a piece of spoiled fish that he could neither swallow or spit out —Amos Oz
- Worried look, like a bird dog uncertain of the scent —Elizabeth Spencer