Dictionary

facial hair en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From facial + hair. First use appears c. 1830, in the Morning Herald.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) Hair on, or from, the face of a human, such as the eyebrows, beard or moustache.
   • The Mbaya of the Amazon remove all facial hair, including eyelashes and eyebrows, and sneer at full-browed whites as "ostrich-brothers". 2000, Daniel McNeill, The Face: A Natural History, page 198:
   • Shaving gear? The man had a beard—or he had one the last time Marianne had seen him. And yet there were flecks of shaving foam and facial hair in the sink. 1988 July, Cathy Gillen Thacker, chapter 14, in Fatal Amusement (Harlequin Intrigue), Toronto, Ont.: Harlequin Books, →ISBN, page 211:
   • Because women naturally do not have a great deal of hair on their faces, it is considered a sign of femininity to have as little facial hair (except for eyebrows and eyelashes) as possible 2012, Margo DeMello, Faces Around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the Human Face, page 134:
   • Her dark, arched eyebrows and soft facial hair complement the membranous leaves behind her. 1995 October 26, “Accent on Women's Art Latinas at two...”, in The Denver Post:
   • Some tribes also practiced nose piercing, and men typically removed their eyelashes, eyebrows and facial hair through plucking. 2004, Mark Busby, The Southwest, page 152:
2. (uncountable, usually) Hair on, or from, the face of an animal.
3. (countable, rare, usually) A single hair on, or from, the face.
   • Wielding a cotton bud like a miniature police truncheon, she pointed to one small black hair I’d never noticed sprouting from my chin. It looked, in the magnified looking glass, like a sequoia tree. / ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ / ‘It’s normal as we age that . . .’ / ‘Would you stop with all this ageing crap, already. I have one facial hair. It’s not as though I’m about to start baying at the moon . . .’ 1998, Kathy Lette, “Send In the Crones”, in Altar Ego, London: Picador, →ISBN, part 1 (The Wedding), page 45:
   • But this bit of facial hair was different. It was a thick, persistent curl that kept appearing on the left-hand side of my chin. I’d find myself toying with it absent-mindedly, before realising what I was doing and ripping it out with the firm grip of my fingertips. If I couldn’t get a good enough hold on it, my tweezers would get the job done, and I’d promptly forget about owning one facial hair until the next time I caught myself twirling it around a nail. 2025, Gina Tonic, “The Time I Got Diagnosed with PCOS”, in Greedy Guts: Notes from an Insatiable Woman, London: Coronet, →ISBN:
   • This was the only foreign hair, a facial hair, recovered from the victim’s body, and, at that stage of the investigation, the hair evidence seemed pretty meager. Nevertheless, the facial hair would ultimately take a central role in the investigation and the fact that the victim’s pubic hairs were cut would greatly assist with subsequent comparisons. […] The detectives now had the last person seen with the victim at the party, a facial hair, a palm print that could not be eliminated, and something to look for, the shoes that left the footwear impressions on the kitchen floor. […] Although an association was never made between that one facial hair from the bathrobe and known hair from the defendant, it took its place as a linchpin in the solution of the case. 2001, Richard E. Bisbing, “Finding Trace Evidence”, in Max M. Houck, editor, Mute Witnesses: Trace Evidence Analysis, London; San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, →ISBN, pages 93–94:
   • In (b), one facial hair of the cat is damaged. This can be categorized as size, shape, or a color defect. 2021, W. M. M. Botejue, L. Ranathunga, “A Guided Visual Feature Generation and Classification Model for Fabric Artwork Defect Detection”, in Subarna Shakya, Valentina Emilia Balas, Wang Haoxiang, Zubair Baig, editors, Proceedings of International Conference on Sustainable Expert Systems: ICSES 2020 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems; 176), Singapore: Springer, →ISBN, page 434:

Forms

Synonyms

face pubes

Translations (27)

nb ansiktshår (hair on the face of a human) · pt pelo facial (hair on the face of a human) · ja ヒゲ (hair on the face of a human) · sv ansiktshår (hair on the face of a human) · fr poils du visage (hair on the face of a human) · fi naamakarvoitus (hair on the face of an animal) · da ansigtshår (hair on the face of a human) · fi naamakarvoitus (hair on the face of a human) · ga gruaig aghaidhe (hair on the face of a human) · cy blew'r wyneb (hair on the face of a human) · cmn 鬍子 /胡子 (hair on the face of a human) · ro păr facial (hair on the face of a human) · pl owłosienie twarzy (hair on the face of an animal) · fr pilosité faciale (hair on the face of a human) · da ansigtsbehåring (hair on the face of a human) · nn ansiktshår (hair on the face of a human) · nl gezichtsbeharing (hair on the face of a human) · pl zarost (hair on the face of a human) · ru во́лосы на лице́ (hair on the face of a human) · es vello facial (hair on the face of a human) · hu arcszőrzet (hair on the face of a human) · uk волосся на обличчі (hair on the face of a human) · de Gesichtsbehaarung (hair on the face of a human) · cmn 毛 (hair on the face of an animal) · fi kasvojen karvoitus (hair on the face of a human) · pt pelo facial (hair on the face of an animal) · vi lông mặt (hair on the face of a human)

wikipedia: Morning Herald