You’re about to learn 27 words for facial expressions in English. You might also like 60 Negative Emotion Adjectives to Describe Negative Feelings.
Facial expressions can tell us how other people are feeling.
They’re a very important part of how we communicate with each other.
Let’s look at different facial expressions for looking happy, sad and confused, plus other facial expressions with your mouth, eyes, nose and your whole face.
Ways of smiling
Smile
What does it mean?
OK. We all know what this means, right?
Good. Let’s move on!
Examples, please!
You can use “smile” as a verb:
“The old woman on the bus spent the whole journey looking and smiling at me.”
Or a noun — often with “on his face”:
“As soon as he walked into the room with that smile on his face, I knew we’d won.”
Grin
What does it mean?
You know that feeling when you smile a lot, and you just can’t control it?
That’s a grin: a big smile — sometimes out of your control.
Examples, please!
Again, you can use it as a verb. Like most of the verbs in this post, use “at” if you want to add an object:
“Stop grinning at me like that and just tell me what happened!”
When we use “grin” as a noun, we can go for the phrase “ear-to-ear.”
“She ran around with an ear-to-ear grin on her face, holding her new toy.”
Beam
What does it mean?
Normally, a beam is just a ray of light.
So when you’re beaming, you’re smiling so much it’s like there’s light coming out of you.
Examples, please!
“Have you seen Alex? She’s been beaming all day. I wonder what happened last night?”
Smirk
What does it mean?
Some people are kind of evil.
Like Tony from my negative personality adjectives lesson:
When Tony smiles at you, you know it’s not a good smile.
When Tony smiles at you, he’s really saying, “Haha! You think that’s a good idea? Well, I think you’re stupid!”
It’s THAT smile.
Examples, please!
As usual, use “at.”
“Don’t just sit there and smirk at me like that! Tell me what you’re thinking!”
We also have this phrase:
“Wipe that smirk off your face, will you?”
And like all the smiles, we can add “on your face”:
“Why has he always got that horrible smirk on his face? Can’t he just smile nicely or just not at all?”
Sneer
What does it mean?
This is similar to “smirk.”
Examples, please!
“I tried to talk to the boss about the new ideas during the meeting, but he just sat there and sneered at me whenever I tried to say anything. I think he doesn’t like me.”
While we’re here, did you notice that we use “smirk” and “sneer” with phrases like “Don’t just sit there and …” or “He just sat there and …”
But why? Why are we talking about sitting?
Well, when someone’s doing something useless or unpleasant (or both), we can add the phrase “just sit there and …” (or “just stand there and …”).
When we do this, we’re drawing attention to the fact that this person is not being very helpful.
Other mouth facial expressions
Pursed lips
What does it mean?
When you bring your lips into your mouth.
Sometimes it’s when you’re angry with someone.
Or sometimes it’s when you’re concentrating on something.
Or sometimes it’s when you’re worried about something.
Examples, please!
“His pursed lips told me something was wrong.”
Pout
What does it mean?
This is basically the opposite of pursed lips.
When you purse your lips, you bring them inside.
When you pout, you push them out. (It rhymes, so it must be true.)
Think about Instagram photos and teenagers who don’t get what they want.
And especially of teenagers who don’t get what they want and then put a selfie on Instagram to complain about it.
They’re seriously just the worst, aren’t they?
Examples, please!
“You won’t get what you want just by sitting there and pouting.”
Your jaw dropped
What does it mean?
Imagine you’re walking along the street, and you suddenly see an elephant selling insurance. How do you think you’d react?
You’d certainly feel shocked, right?
And your mouth — what do you think would happen to your mouth?
It would be wide open, wouldn’t it?
The sight of the insurance-selling elephant would cause your jaw (the lower part of your mouth) to drop (or open).
Examples, please!
OK. So you can just use the verb:
“His jaw is going to drop when he sees what we’ve done to his car!”
But we also have the adjective “jaw-dropping” to describe something really impressive or amazing.
“The election? What a jaw-dropping experience. No one would’ve thought that THAT guy would win!”
Stick your tongue out
What does it mean?
Take your tongue (not with your hands, please) and put it outside your mouth.
Examples, please!
Like with many facial expressions, you can add “at” if you want to direct the gesture towards someone.
“The kids took my wallet straight out of my pocket, stuck their tongues out at me and ran off laughing.”
You can also say “poke your tongue out”:
“Did you see what that monkey just …? I promise you! It just poked its tongue out at me!”
Facial expressions with your eyebrows
Just so we all know what eyebrows are, here are a pair of bushy ones:
Raise your eyebrows
What does it mean?
Move your eyebrows upwards.
If you do this, you might be surprised.
Or you might be doing that expression that says, “Yes, yes, yes. You saw a horse with five legs. The thing is, I don’t believe you.”
Examples, please!
Again, if you want to include the object of the sentence, use “at.”
“Don’t raise your eyebrows at me like that! I swear! It had five legs. And two heads. I’m not making this up!”
So the subject can be the person whose eyebrows are raised.
But if we want to talk about some shocking or surprising news, for example, we can use “the news” as the subject:
“The news of the marriage between the rival gang members raised eyebrows.”
Raise an eyebrow
What does it mean?
This is different from “raise your eyebrows.”
When you raise both eyebrows, your face is saying “Wow! I’m shocked!”
When you just raise one, it’s much cooler.
It’s like your face is saying, “Hey! I see what you’re doing. I don’t quite understand it, but I’m still in complete control here.”
Examples, please!
“When I told her I was making ice cream curry for dinner, she raised an eyebrow at me.”
Frown
What does it mean?
Do the opposite of raising your eyebrows.
Bring them down so you look angry.
Congratulations! Now you’re frowning!
Examples, please!
Again — you can use “at”:
“He just sat there and frowned at the piece of paper for hours before suddenly jumping out of his chair and running out of the room. What a strange doctor.”
Facial expressions with your eyes
Wide-eyed
What does it mean?
This is an adjective, and we use it to describe someone’s face when they have their eyes completely open — usually because they’re shocked or amazed by something.
Examples, please!
We often use “wide-eyed” to describe youth or people who have little experience of the big, bad world.
“When we got off the bus, we were immediately surrounded by friendly, wide-eyed kids.”
We can also use it as an adverb:
“‘Is that your real hair?’ she asked me, wide-eyed.”
Squint
What does it mean?
Close your eyes about 80 percent of the way.
That’s squinting.
You probably do it when you go out without your sunglasses on a sunny day.
Or if you’re looking at someone you hate.
Examples, please!
“His writing was so small that the whole class was squinting at the board trying to read it.”
Sideways glance
What does it mean?
When you look at someone next to you without moving your head.
Examples, please!
A sideways glance can be something positive or something negative.
When you’re kind of suspicious of someone, but in a playful way, you can give them a sideways glance:
“‘You’re not a professional footballer! I don’t believe you!’ she said with a sideways glance.”
But it can also happen when you don’t trust someone, and even when you want to be quite aggressive:
“I caught his sideways glance and immediately knew he didn’t want to work with me on this.”
There are a few common verbs you can use with this:
“She cast him a sideways glance.”
“Eric shot his father a sideways glance and went back to his newspaper.”
“I saw you throw me a sideways glance! I hate it when you do that!”
Roll your eyes
What does it mean?
Quick! Look up at the inside of your head!
That’s it! You’ve just rolled your eyes.
It’s that expression we use when we think someone’s being stupid or annoying.
Examples, please!
“So I went to the embassy to report my stolen passport, and the guy there just rolled his eyes at me! Ridiculous!”
Wink
What does it mean?
Quickly close one eye and open it again.
That’s it — you’ve winked!
This means slightly different things in different cultures, but in my experience, when someone winks at you, they’re basically saying, “Hey! I’m on your side!”
Sometimes it can even mean “Don’t worry! I won’t tell anyone — this can be our little secret!”
Examples, please!
“Charlie paid for his bag of sweets. Just as he was leaving, the shopkeeper handed him a Plonka Bar and winked at him.”
By the way, I heard that you really shouldn’t wink at people in Pakistan. It’s considered quite aggressive.
Give someone a dirty look
What does it mean?
What do you do when someone does something you really hate?
Or when they’ve just said something horrible to you?
You look at them in an angry way, right? You want them to know you’re not happy.
That’s a dirty look.
Examples, please!
“Don’t ask that guy for help. I just asked him the time, and he threw me this really dirty look!”
Look down your nose at someone
What does it mean?
There are some people in this world who somehow think they’re superior — that they’re better than everyone else.
Remember Tony?
Here he is again, looking down his nose at everyone else:
Examples, please!
“That shop sucks! All the staff just sort of look down their noses at you. Not fun shopping.”
Glazed over
What does it mean?
You know when someone’s talking to you, and it’s just not interesting at all.
Sometimes you start staring into space and imagining building a castle made of chocolate.
Or you start thinking about what to buy from the shops that evening.
Either way — whether it’s chocolate castles or supermarkets — the other person can see in your eyes that you’re somewhere else.
Because your eyes have glazed over.
Examples, please!
“I started talking to him about the best way to avoid traffic on the M25 during Friday evening rush hour, but his eyes just glazed over.”
Facial expressions with your nose
Wrinkle your nose
What does it mean?
When did you last say, “Eugh! That food stinks!”?
Try to remember how your face looked.
It’s that face we make when we feel something in between disapproval and complete disgust.
Examples, please!
“The kids showed their auntie their drawings, but she just wrinkled her nose at them. She’s not very good with kids.”
Facial expressions with your whole face
Long face
What does it mean?
This is basically an unhappy expression.
It’s the opposite of a smile.
Examples, please!
Let’s say you run into one of your friends, and she’s looking quite unhappy.
You want to ask her why she looks sad.
So you can say:
“Hey! Why the long face?”
This leads me to a very famous and very bad joke:
“A horse walks into a bar, and the barman says, ‘Why the long face?’”
Haha!
Blank expression
What does it mean?
This is also known as “poker face.”
When someone just doesn’t show any emotion or expression at all.
You just can’t read them.
Examples, please!
We can use “don’t just sit there with …” with this expression:
“Don’t just sit there with that blank expression on your face! Say something!”
You can also use it with the verb “have”:
“Have you met Yami? She’s the one who constantly has a blank expression on her face. Aliens could land outside her café, and she wouldn’t look surprised.”
Grimace
What does it mean?
This is when you make a particularly ugly face as a reaction to something.
Maybe you’re disgusted at something, like while watching Cannibal Holocaust or Texas Chainsaw Massacre or some other ridiculously violent film.
Maybe you disapprove of something, like when you hear that your best friend has started going out with Tony, even though he’s the worst man in the world.
Or maybe it’s out of fear of something you need to do, like when you’ve just been told that you’ll have to swim across that alligator river again.
Examples, please!
We often use “grimace” with “make”:
“Every time he wears those green shorts, it makes me grimace. I can’t help it!”
It can be a verb:
“As soon as they walked into the room, she grimaced.”
Or a noun — sometimes with “on her face”:
“With a grimace on her face, she stood up and walked onto the stage.”
Wince
What does it mean?
A grimace is a big, obvious expression.
And a wince is like a mini grimace.
It isn’t easy to spot, and it’s often gone in a few seconds.
Examples, please!
A wince is often associated with pain:
“He pulled the knife out of his arm with just a wince of pain and then jumped off the waterfall into the river and beat up a crocodile.”
A lot of examples I found also talk about avoiding wincing:
“Emma tried not to wince, but the pain was just too much.”
Neutral expression
What does it mean?
This is the same as a blank expression.
You just can’t tell what this person is thinking.
Examples, please!
We often use the phrase “met with a neutral expression.”
“I told the cop that my bike had been stolen, but I was met with a neutral expression. She then said that I shouldn’t have parked it outside that notorious bowling alley.”
Quizzical expression
What does it mean?
Have you noticed that thing that YouTubers use for the preview image of their videos?
They’re always looking either shocked or quizzical.
You know, that expression that says “Hmmm… That’s interesting, but how did it happen? I’m a bit confused but also interested!”
Possibly with one finger on their lips and with their eyebrows raised.
Examples, please!
We often use the phrase “with a quizzical expression on her face.”
“She looked down and saw the cat looking up at her with a quizzical expression on its face. She had no idea what on earth it wanted.”
OK! Good work!
We’ve just covered a lot of different facial expressions in English.
So, let’s practice!
Take a look at these questions:
- What makes you grimace?
- What’s it like dealing with bureaucracy in your country? How often do you get met with blank expressions and rolling eyes?
Answers in the comments.
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Face it — sometimes you must give your readers a countenance-based clue about what a character or a subject is feeling. First try conveying emotions indirectly or through dialogue, but if you must fall back on a descriptive term, try for precision:
1. Absent: preoccupied
2. Agonized: as if in pain or tormented
3. Alluring: attractive, in the sense of arousing desire
4. Appealing: attractive, in the sense of encouraging goodwill and/or interest
5. Beatific: see blissful
6. Bilious: ill-natured
7. Black: angry or sad, or see hostile
8. Bleak: see grim and hopeless
9. Blinking: surprise, or lack of concern
10. Blissful: showing a state of happiness or divine contentment
11. Blithe: carefree, lighthearted, or heedlessly indifferent
12. Brooding: see anxious and gloomy
13. Bug eyed: frightened or surprised
14. Chagrined: humiliated or disappointed
15. Cheeky: cocky, insolent
16. Cheerless: sad
17. Choleric: hot-tempered, irate
18. Coy: flirtily playful, or evasive
19. Crestfallen: see despondent
20. Darkly: with depressed or malevolent feelings
21. Deadpan: expressionless, to conceal emotion or heighten humor
22. Dejected: see despondent
23. Derisive: see sardonic
24. Despondent: depressed or discouraged
25. Doleful: sad or afflicted
26. Dour: stern or obstinate; see also despondent
27. Downcast: see despondent
28. Dreamy: distracted by daydreaming or fantasizing
29. Ecstatic: delighted or entranced
30. Etched: see fixed
31. Faint: cowardly, weak, or barely perceptible
32. Fixed: concentrated or immobile
33. Furtive: stealthy
34. Gazing: staring intently
35. Glancing: staring briefly as if curious but evasive
36. Glaring: see hostile
37. Glazed: expressionless due to fatigue or confusion
38. Gloomy: see despondent and sullen
39. Glowering: annoyed or angry
40. Glowing: see radiant
41. Grim: see despondent; also, fatalistic or pessimistic
42. Grave: serious, expressing emotion due to loss or sadness
43. Haunted: frightened, worried, or guilty
44. Hopeless: depressed by a lack of encouragement or optimism
45. Hostile: aggressively angry, intimidating, or resistant
46. Hunted: tense as if worried about pursuit
47. Impassive: see deadpan
48. Inscrutable: mysterious, unreadable
49. Jeering: insulting or mocking
50. Languid: lazy or weak
51. Leering: see meaningful; also, sexually suggestive
52. Meaningful: to convey an implicit connotation or shared secret
53. Mild: easygoing
54. Mischievous: annoyingly or maliciously playful
55. Moody: see sullen
56. Pained: affected with discomfort or pain
57. Pallid: see wan
58. Peering: with curiosity or suspicion
59. Peeved: annoyed
60. Petulant: see cheeky and peeved
61. Pitying: sympathetic
62. Pleading: seeking apology or assistance
63. Pouting: see sullen
64. Quizzical: questioning or confused
65. Radiant: bright, happy
66. Roguish: see mischievous
67. Sanguine: bloodthirsty, confident
68. Sardonic: mocking
69. Scornful: contemptuous or mocking
70. Scowling: displeased or threatening
71. Searching: curious or suspicious
72. Set: see fixed
73. Shamefaced: ashamed or bashful
74. Slack-jawed: dumbfounded or surprised
75. Sly: cunning; see also furtive and mischievous
76. Snarling: surly
77. Sneering: see scornful
78. Somber: see grave
79. Sour: unpleasant
80. Stolid: inexpressive
81. Straight-faced: see deadpan
82. Sulky: see sullen
83. Sullen: resentful
84. Taunting: see jeering
85. Taut: high-strung
86. Tense: see taut
87. Tight: see pained and taut
88. Unblinking: see fixed
89. Vacant: blank or stupid looking
90. Veiled: see inscrutable
91. Wan: pale, sickly; see also faint
92. Wary: cautious or cunning
93. Wide eyed: frightened or surprised
94. Wild eyed: excited, frightened, or stressful
95. Wistful: yearning or sadly thoughtful
96. Withering: devastating; see also wrathful
97. Woeful: full of grief or lamentation
98. Wolfish: see leering and mischievous
99. Wrathful: indignant or vengeful
100. Wry: twisted or crooked to express cleverness or a dark or ironic feeling
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This list of facial expressions for writers is one of my all-time most popular posts. It came about because I started to list facial expressions in a spiral notebook for my own reference, and then I figured I’d share. A lot of writers keep this page bookmarked!
Writers need good facial expression descriptions in their writing to help the readers picture the characters and to convey emotions. However, it’s easy for us to rely on the same descriptions over and over again. And sometimes in the middle of writing, when we’re trying to find the words to describe an angry expression or a sad expression, we draw a blank.
The expressions are broken down by the part of the face. Note that some of them work for more than one emotion—a person might narrow their eyes out of vindictiveness or skepticism, for instance, and their face might turn red out of anger or out of embarrassment. Some of them require a little more explanation on your part. You’ll have to say what she’s glaring at, or if his face is contorting in rage, or grief, or what. And not all of these will work for every character. In many cases I’ve given several ways to describe the same thing. While I have included some longer phrases, they are not proprietary and it’s fine to use them.
Some of these aren’t exactly words to describe facial expressions, but they’re useful for dialogue tags. In fact, I started this list in a notebook for myself as a reference so I would stop using “he said” and “she said” so often…and as any editor or writing coach will tell you, just using tons of synonyms for “said” does not solve this problem; it makes it worse! By using a facial expression as a dialogue tag, you can also convey the tone of voice.
Here’s the facial expressions list. You might want to pin it for future reference!
Ways to Describe Expressions Related to the Eyes and Eyebrows
his eyes widened
their eyes went round
her eyelids drooped
his eyes narrowed
his eyes lit up
his eyes darted
he squinted
she blinked
her eyes twinkled
his eyes gleamed
her eyes sparkled
his eyes flashed
her eyes glinted
his eyes burned with…
her eyes blazed with…
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her eyes sparked with…
her eyes flickered with…
_____ glowed in his eyes
the corners of his eyes crinkled
she rolled her eyes
he looked heavenward
she glanced up to the ceiling
she winked
tears filled her eyes
his eyes welled up
her eyes swam with tears
his eyes flooded with tears
her eyes were wet
their eyes glistened
tears shimmered in her eyes
tears shone in his eyes
her eyes were glossy
he was fighting back tears
tears ran down her cheeks
his eyes closed
she squeezed her eyes shut
he shut his eyes
his lashes fluttered
she batted her lashes
his brows knitted 
her forehead creased
his forehead furrowed
her forehead puckered
a line appeared between their brows
his brows drew together
her brows snapped together
his eyebrows rose
she raised a brow
he lifted an eyebrow
his eyebrows waggled
she gave him a once-over
he sized her up
her eyes bored into him
she took in the sight of…
he glared
she peered
he gazed
she glanced
he stared
she scrutinized
he studied
she gaped
he observed
she surveyed
he gawked
he leered
his pupils (were) dilated
her pupils were huge
his pupils flared
Ways to Describe Expressions Related to the Nose
her nose crinkled
his nose wrinkled
she sneered
his nostrils flared
she stuck her nose in the air
he sniffed
she sniffled
Ways to Describe Expressions Related to the Mouth
she smiled
he smirked
she grinned
he simpered
she beamed
her mouth curved into a smile
the corners of his mouth turned up
the corner of her mouth quirked up
a corner of his mouth lifted
his mouth twitched
he gave a half-smile
she gave a lopsided grin
his mouth twisted 
he plastered a smile on his face
she forced a smile
he faked a smile
their smile faded
his smile slipped
he pursed his lips
she pouted
his mouth snapped shut
her mouth set in a hard line
he pressed his lips together
she bit her lip
he drew his lower lip between his teeth
she nibbled on her bottom lip
he chewed on his bottom lip
his jaw set
her jaw clenched
his jaw tightened
a muscle in her jaw twitched
he ground his jaw
he snarled/his lips drew back in a snarl
her mouth fell open
his jaw dropped
her jaw went slack
he gritted his teeth
she gnashed her teeth
her lower lip trembled
his lower lip quivered
Ways to Describe Reactions Related to the Skin
she paled
he blanched
she went white
the color drained out of his face
his face reddened
her cheeks turned pink
his face flushed
she blushed
he turned red
she turned scarlet
he turned crimson
a flush crept up her face
Ways to Describe Expressions Having to Do With the Whole Face
he screwed up his face
she scrunched up her face
they grimaced
she winced
she gave him a dirty look
he frowned
she scowled
he glowered
her whole face lit up
she brightened
his face went blank
her face contorted
his face twisted
her expression closed up
his expression dulled
her expression hardened
she went poker-faced
a vein popped out in his neck
awe transformed his face
fear crossed her face
sadness clouded his features
terror overtook his face
recognition dawned on her face
~
It may seem a little obsessive to list facial expressions, but there’s almost nothing I like better than making lists! I have many more lists like this in my book Master Lists for Writers: Thesauruses, Plots, Character Traits, Names, and More. I think it’s a great tool for making “show don’t tell” easier and for inspiration during every part of the writing process. Check it out!
Thank you so much for reading, and happy writing!
The idea for the Describing Words engine came when I was building the engine for Related Words (it’s like a thesaurus, but gives you a much broader set of related words, rather than just synonyms). While playing around with word vectors and the «HasProperty» API of conceptnet, I had a bit of fun trying to get the adjectives which commonly describe a word. Eventually I realised that there’s a much better way of doing this: parse books!
Project Gutenberg was the initial corpus, but the parser got greedier and greedier and I ended up feeding it somewhere around 100 gigabytes of text files — mostly fiction, including many contemporary works. The parser simply looks through each book and pulls out the various descriptions of nouns.
Hopefully it’s more than just a novelty and some people will actually find it useful for their writing and brainstorming, but one neat little thing to try is to compare two nouns which are similar, but different in some significant way — for example, gender is interesting: «woman» versus «man» and «boy» versus «girl». On an inital quick analysis it seems that authors of fiction are at least 4x more likely to describe women (as opposed to men) with beauty-related terms (regarding their weight, features and general attractiveness). In fact, «beautiful» is possibly the most widely used adjective for women in all of the world’s literature, which is quite in line with the general unidimensional representation of women in many other media forms. If anyone wants to do further research into this, let me know and I can give you a lot more data (for example, there are about 25000 different entries for «woman» — too many to show here).
The blueness of the results represents their relative frequency. You can hover over an item for a second and the frequency score should pop up. The «uniqueness» sorting is default, and thanks to my Complicated Algorithm™, it orders them by the adjectives’ uniqueness to that particular noun relative to other nouns (it’s actually pretty simple). As you’d expect, you can click the «Sort By Usage Frequency» button to adjectives by their usage frequency for that noun.
Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source mongodb which was used in this project.
Please note that Describing Words uses third party scripts (such as Google Analytics and advertisements) which use cookies. To learn more, see the privacy policy.