100 Words for Facial Expressions

100 Words for Facial Expressions:

"Face it — sometimes you must give your readers a countenance-based clue about what a character or a subject is feeling. First try conveying emotions indirectly or through dialogue, but if you must fall back on a descriptive term, try for precision:

1. Absent: preoccupied

2. Agonized: as if in pain or tormented

3. Alluring: attractive, in the sense of arousing desire

4. Appealing: attractive, in the sense of encouraging goodwill and/or interest

5. Beatific: see blissful

6. Bilious: ill-natured

7. Black: angry or sad, or see hostile

8. Bleak: see grim and hopeless

9. Blinking: surprise, or lack of concern

10. Blissful: showing a state of happiness or divine contentment

11. Blithe: carefree, lighthearted, or heedlessly indifferent

12. Brooding: see anxious and gloomy

13. Bug eyed: frightened or surprised

14. Chagrined: humiliated or disappointed

15. Cheeky: cocky, insolent

16. Cheerless: sad

17. Choleric: hot-tempered, irate

18. Coy: flirtily playful, or evasive

19. Crestfallen: see despondent

20. Darkly: with depressed or malevolent feelings

21. Deadpan: expressionless, to conceal emotion or heighten humor

22. Dejected: see despondent

23. Derisive: see sardonic

24. Despondent: depressed or discouraged

25. Doleful: sad or afflicted

26. Dour: stern or obstinate; see also despondent

27. Downcast: see despondent

28. Dreamy: distracted by daydreaming or fantasizing"