verb
-
to face or stare down
-
to confront boldly or defiantly
Etymology
Origin of outface
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She uses it to outface the world; more importantly, it stores the breath she releases when sculpting the air as she sings.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 9, 2011
Winston Churchill had flown back to Britain and this week would again bulge up in Parliament to face, and probably outface, his critics.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
A new English plutocracy, mercantile and determined to outface the landed gentry, was on the rise.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
Last week Premier Bennett was back in Ottawa and Minister Stevens found that he could no longer outface the intolerable situation The Pamphlet had put him into.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
Yet here he was, apparently wishing to outface me about something or other, yet at the same time unable to look me in the eye.
From The Tower of Oblivion by Oliver [pseud.] Onions
Ned is not found until years later, but on the way every conceivable stereotype of the Old South and the Wild West is slyly overturned or brazenly outfaced.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
In Berinhed's Forest Tristran outfaced one of the great, tawny eagles, who would have carried them both back to its nest to feed its young and was afraid of nothing at all, save fire.
From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
![]()
They mocked Nuñez when Pedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked Pedro questions to clear his character, Pedro denied and outfaced him, and was afterwards hostile to him.
From The Strand Magazine, Volume XXVII, Issue 160, April, 1904 by Various
Justinian, a great Catholic emperor, perhaps the greatest, faced and outfaced the Arian Goths.
From Ravenna, a Study by Edward Hutton
The Cosimo Pratts were not outfaced from anything; they had merely seen a new and heralding light.
From A Crooked Mile by Oliver [pseud.] Onions
Alberto Carvalho wants to install outfacing perimeter cameras at schools to fend off crime, and has appealed to Mayor Karen Bass for speed bumps and flashing lights around campuses.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 4, 2023
A drawling commentary by Will James, interrupted by occasional dialog between human characters, accompanies the career of Smoky, a range-loving mustang who becomes leader of his herd by outfacing a mountain lion.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
Actor Muni has never been so impressive as he is in outfacing an armed camp of rebels; Actress Davis' mad scene is real cinematic excitement.
From Time Magazine Archive
![]()
Snipers' posts had been built, outfacing our lines, and German ammunition and bombs and coiled wire and a great litter of timber lay about.
From From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 by Philip Gibbs
There is no outfacing the menace of death.
From English Book-Illustration of To-day Appreciations of the Work of Living English Illustrators With Lists of Their Books by Rose Esther Dorothea Sketchley
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.