Welcome back to all of our French language learners! This week’s blog is all about the word face.
Before you try saying it aloud it like the English word ‘face’, take a listen to the French pronunciation in the audio clip below:
This is of course a classic example of a false friend – a word which shares the same spelling as an English word, but doesn’t quite share the same meaning. In English, ‘face’ usually refers to the facial region of our body, but the equivalent French word in this case is usually visage. However, sometimes in English we use ‘face’ to talk about other things, like the ‘face’ of a building or a cliff. This is one of the correct French translations of face, but it’s also most commonly used to mean ‘opposite’.
Face is a feminine noun. You might be able to work out the gender if it follows the indefinite article une or the definite article la. But if you’re new to French noun genders and want to find out more, visit our Easy Learning French Grammar page on working the gender of French nouns.
After all of that explanation, it’s time to get into our examples. Here’s how you might use face in everyday French phrases and contexts:
de face from the front; straight on; face on
d’en face opposite
en face (de) opposite
L’immeuble se trouve en face de l’hôpital. The block of flats is opposite the hospital.
Nous habitons en face. We live opposite.
Je n’aime pas la voiture d’en face. I don’t like the car opposite.
« Pile ou face ?» « Face. » “Heads or tails?” “Heads.” (note that the order is reversed in French, but it sounds unnatural to say ‘tails or heads’ in English!)
Un cube a six faces égales. A cube has six equal sides.
Sometimes, the translations of face are indeed more suited to using the English word ‘face’, but usually in a more figurative way. For example:
face à face face to face
se voiler la face to turn your head (away); to face/look the other way
sauver la face to save face
perdre la face to lose face
faire face à quelque chose / quelqu’un to face something / someone (in the sense of confronting, encountering or dealing with it/them)
Si elle faisait face au danger, elle serait toujourscourageuse. If she was facing danger, she would always be brave.
Le chemin passe par la face sud de cette montagne. The path goes by the southern face of this mountain.
Thanks for reading this week’s blog and boosting your French vocabulary. Next time you come face to face with face, we hope that you’ll now have enough information to understand it! See you next week for another word.
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins
