baby face
7
3.5
- noun
- /ˈbeɪbi feɪs/
:
cara de niño
- With her smooth skin and wide eyes, she has such a baby face that everyone thinks she is still in her teens.
- a round baby face
- a guy with a baby face
- a little baby face
He's the biggest baby face in the company in the world.
- He's the biggest baby face in the company in the world.
Examples
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He was short, which meant I could look right into his olive-toned baby face with its big brown eyes.
Fiction book (1993) -
He was a teenage boy with a baby face and a slight build.
Blog text (21) -
You have got a baby face # #
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After six long years, I can read that baby face of yours like a book.
-
"Maybe it's your baby face."
Fiction book (1998) -
All the young heads in the room, those baby faces on grown bodies, turned to look.
Fiction book (1998) -
I've always had kind of a baby face myself.
-
He had such a baby face.
-
Inside, Regan found a pleasant-looking guy with a baby face sitting behind the receptionist's desk.
Fiction book (1993) -
I was very surprised, shocked almost, because he was only about thirty-five, and his slightly pudgy baby face, always completely hairless—not even the shadow of a beard—made him look even younger.
Fiction book (1996)
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'baby' (young, infantile) with 'face' (front of the head): a face that looks like a baby's. This noun+noun compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and would be readily inferable by a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
Baby face comes from the picture of a baby's face with round cheeks, smooth skin and big, open eyes. That's why calling someone a baby face means they look or seem 'younger' or 'more innocent' than they really are.