Faced

How to spell faced

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce faced

What does faced mean?

1. verbDealt with or confronted a difficult situation or person.
2. verbWas turned or positioned toward a particular direction.

Faced in a sentence

• She faced a stack of unpaid invoices when she opened the office.

• The hotel room faced the harbour, so she watched the boats each morning.

• The company faced heavy fines after the audit revealed errors.

• The old house faced south to catch the afternoon sun.

Where does faced come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of the verb 'face', which itself derives from the noun 'face'. English took 'face' through Old French 'face' in the early 1300s, and that came from a Vulgar Latin form 'facia', a reshaping of classical Latin 'facies', meaning 'form, figure, or appearance'. The Latin root is tied to 'facere', 'to make or do', so a 'facies' was originally the made or fashioned outward form of a thing. From naming the front of the head, the verb soon stretched to mean turning one's front toward something and then to confronting or dealing with it. The spelling is straightforward: keep the silent 'e' of 'face' but drop it before adding '-ed', giving 'faced' rather than the wrong 'faceed'.

How the word is built

• face (root, from Latin facies: form, appearance)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)