pig face
- noun
- Informal
:
cara de cerdo
- Whenever the teacher turned her back, Tom pulled a pig face to make the class laugh.
Examples
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She caught her little brother making a pig face in the bathroom mirror.
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At the party, everyone tried their best pig face during the photo contest.
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Look at that pig face she just made!
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What a silly pig face!
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She caught her little brother making a pig face in the bathroom mirror.
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Whenever the teacher turned her back, Tom pulled a pig face to make the class laugh.
-
Look at that pig face she just made!
How Silly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a silly or pig-like facial expression' is directly derivable from combining 'pig' (pig-like) and 'face' (the front of the head); a B1 learner who knows both words can infer someone making a 'pig face' as having a face that resembles a pig or looks ridiculous. This is a literal descriptive compound rather than an idiomatic or metaphorically shifted phrase, and similar descriptive patterns exist cross-linguistically, so it is transparent.
Etymology
The noun pig face comes from the image of someone making their face look like a pig, with pushed lips, a wrinkled nose and puffed cheeks. So it means 'a silly or ridiculous face'.