21 September 2020
Face is a word that has many meanings in English, but here I am only going to focus on a few.
The word comes from the Latin facies and could mean one’s literal face or the surface of something, as in the face of the earth. It makes its way into English via the Anglo-Norman face.
One of the first uses in English is from a life of St. Thomas Becket that appears in the South-English Legendary, a collection of hagiographies or saints’ lives. Here is the version from the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 108, which was copied c.1300:
Þat face was ȝwyȝt and cler i-nouȝ: and no blod nas þar-inne,
bote fram þe riȝt half of is frount: toward þe left chinne
A small rewe þere was of blode: þat ouer is nose drouȝ;
More blod þar nas in al is face: ase folk i-saiȝ i-nouȝ.(That face was white and very clear; and no blood was therein,
but from the right half of his front, toward the left chin
There was a small row of blood that drew over his nose;
There was no blood in all of his face, as folk often tell.)
The use of face to mean the surface of something, which had existed in both Latin and Anglo-Norman, isn’t recorded in English until a bit later. From a Wycliffite Bible found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 369, copied sometime before 1382. Here is Isaiah 14:21:
Greithe ȝe his sones to slaȝter, for the wickidnesse of ther fadres; thei shul not togidere rise, ne eritagen the erthe, ne fulfille the face of the roundness of the cite.
(Prepare his sons for slaughter because of the wickedness of their fathers; they shall not rise together, nor inherit the earth, nor fill the face of the earth with the city.)
The corresponding phrase in the Vulgate is neque implebunt faciem orbis civitatum.
The sense of outward appearance or pretense, as in to put on a good face appears in the same manuscript. Here is 2 Corinthians 5:12:
We comenden not vs silf eftsoone to ȝou, but we ȝyuen to ȝou occacioun for to glorie for vs, that ȝe haue to hem that glorien in the face, and not in the herte.
(We commend not ourselves again to you, but we give to you occasion to glory on our behalf, that you have [understanding] of them that glory in the face, and not in the heart.)
The sense of face as reputation or social standing is a much later development, imported from China in the nineteenth century. It’s a calque of two Chinese words, liǎn (face, moral character) and miànzi (face, social prestige). Here is an early use of the phrase found in The Chinese Repository, a collection of English-language documents published in China, from December 1834:
The contrast which is drawn in this paper between the members of the present co-hong and the shameless merchants of former times is a curious specimen of Chinese rhetoric, and shows how much it behooves the present fraternity to have “a tender regard for their face,” lest they should lose their present high reputation for propriety and respectability.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008, s.v. face.
“Art. VII. Journal of Occurences: Proclamation Against the Hong Merchants Conniving at and Abetting Vice in Foreigners; Imperial Edict Against Extortions of Hong Merchants,” (December 1834). The Chinese Repository, vol. 3 of 20. Canton: Printed for the Proprietors, 1834, 391. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. facies. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments: With the Apocryphal Books in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, vols. 3 and 4 of 4. Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1850, 3:425, 4:381. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Horstmann, Carl. “St. Thomas of Caunterbury.” The Early South-English Legendary. Early English Text Society (EETS). London: N. Trübner, 1887. lines, 2175–78, 169. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. face n.
Oxford English Dictionary, September 2009, s.v. face, n.