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Glite Dictionary
🎭 White makeup 🤡 A clown type 🐄 A cattle breed
whiteface

whiteface

1 9.5
A clown who wears full white face makeup and an elegant costume
  • noun
  • /ˈwaɪtfeɪs/
: payaso de cara blanca
  • Whiteface, outsized painted lips, and orange string wigs are all startlingly bright in the foggy coastal air.
  • whiteface clown

Examples

  • At the circus, the whiteface performer dazzled the audience with his graceful tricks and bright attire.

  • The clown painted his face with whiteface make-up, enhancing his elegant costume and precise movements.

  • The tall boy in whiteface and harlequin tights is trying to warm her into life.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Children laughed as the whiteface clown juggled colorful balls under the big top.

Surface Forms

whiteface singular
whitefaces plural

Morphology

whiteface = white + face (transparent) = white + face

A conventional compound naming a clown type characterized by a white-painted face; meaning is directly derived from 'white' + 'face'.

Etymology

Whiteface for the clown type comes from the words white and face, because this clown paints a 'white face' and usually acts in a careful, formal way. So a whiteface clown is the one with a white-made-up face and a precise, elegant style.