Friday 4 January 2013

The face of things to come

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


5 January

There are many ways in which we use this word face, of which I was encouraged to think of by glancing at a kitchen-clock (which I never look at for the time, as it is stopped at 2.10) :

* He looked at the clock-face

* She did an about-face

* Cromwell’s men defaced* many religious statues

* I can’t face it this time

* We will face out this embarrassment

* This tomb-stone has been defaced*

* This is the face of things to come

* The new face of Gucci

* The new face of Thatcherism

* Facing forward

* Facing into the storm

* At last, she is facing up to her past

* They have always been a two-faced pair

* Don’t deface these posters again !


End-notes

* Certainly in the first case, the word means that the faces have been taken off, which is what de-facing literally means, and it might have been done, too, to the top layer of stone of a grave-marker.


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