Don't get a face on

My brother sent me an e mail the other day that started with ‘Don’t get a face on, but…’. It turned out that he’d lent one of my books to his son, who had scribbled on it, chewed it and basically destroyed it. ‘Don’t get a face on’ obviously is a way to say ‘don’t get angry’, and it made me think about some of the expressions we have with the word ‘face’.

Of course, ‘saving face’ and ‘losing face’ has been a concept in many countries for many years, and has become a recognised concept in Britain too. I wonder if this is where some of our expressions come from? The one that comes to my mind first is ‘make a face’ or ‘pull a face’, which you might do when you’re angry, or if you eat something that tastes horrible.

Children also pull faces for fun - my nieces and nephews really like sticking out their tongue and rolling their eyes back into their heads!

(Source: www.englishonline.org.cn)

Johnny Grammar is English Online's resident grammar teacher. Johnny loves to tackle your worst grammar nightmares and provide you with simple explanations.

Johnny's blog: Johnny talks about interesting words and expressions in English that he comes across in his daily life.