Meaning & use
visage
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Meanings
nouncountableliterary
A person's face, especially when it is described for its expression or character.
Grammar: Usually singular because a person has one face: his stern visage.
Patterns
- a stern visage
- someone's visage darkens
The old sailor's weathered visage told of decades at sea.
A grim visage appeared at the window and startled the children.
Her calm visage hid how nervous she really was.
nouncountablefigurativerare
The outward look or appearance of something, as if it were a face.
Grammar: Figurative and rare; often followed by of: the visage of the city.
Patterns
- the visage of something
The towers gave the harbor a proud visage at dawn.
Fog changed the familiar visage of the hills.
Under its polished visage, the company was in serious trouble.
Word forms
| plural | visages |
|---|
Common combinations
- a stern visage
- The headmaster greeted us with a stern visage.
- a noble visage
- The statue showed a noble visage staring toward the sea.
- a pale visage
- Her pale visage shone in the candlelight.
- a weathered visage
- The farmer's weathered visage was creased by sun and wind.
- a grim visage
- A grim visage looked down from the portrait.
Synonyms and how they differ
- face
- Face is the ordinary everyday word, while visage sounds poetic or old-fashioned and focuses on expression.
- countenance
- Countenance is also formal but stresses the expression or mood showing on the face rather than the face itself.
- features
- Features refers to the individual parts of a face, such as nose and eyes, while visage treats the face as a whole.
- mien
- Mien is rarer and covers the whole bearing and manner of a person, not just the face.
Word family
- visaged adjective
- having a particular kind of face, as in grim-visaged
- vis-a-vis preposition
- in relation to, borrowed from French and from the same Latin root meaning face
Commonly confused: visage or visa? visage or image?
visage vs visa
A visa is an official document allowing you to enter a country; it only looks similar to visage and is unrelated to faces.
visage vs image
An image is any picture or likeness, whereas a visage is specifically a person's face.
Practice
The poet described the king's ______ as pale and sorrowful as he walked through the hall.
Choose one answer.
Visage means face, and a face can be pale and sorrowful. Vision means eyesight or something imagined, so it would not describe how a king looks.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “visage”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.