written all over someone's face
5
4.0
- idiom
- Informal
:
escrito en su rostro
- Betrayal was written all over her face.
- agony written all over her face
Examples
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Her disappointment was written all over her face, making it clear that she wasn't pleased with the news.
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Because it's written all over her face.
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I can see it written all over your face.
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It's written all over your face.
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What you think about me is written all over your face.
Fiction book (2002) -
But you've got kindness written all over your face.
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He felt bad for being so disrespectful; it was written all over his face.
Blog text (5) -
Sara: Sara, I won't even ask how you feel about this series of movies ending, because it's obvious that you are a combination of heartbroken and excited; it's written all over your face.
Blog text (29) -
The guilt was written all over his face when he realized his mistake.
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When he heard the bad news, shock was written all over his face for everyone to see.
Synonyms
17
5.8
Very easy to see because a feeling or quality shows on someone's face
Antonyms
How Obvious
Surface Forms
Morphology
written + all + over + someone's + face
The phrase creates a clear, imageable metaphor: if something is "written all over" someone's face, the emotion or feeling is visibly marked across their face. The constituents ('written' = marked, 'all over' = throughout, 'face' = visible expression) combine in a directly inferable way and similar expressions exist cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the words would very likely grasp the meaning.
Etymology
The idiom written all over someone's face may come from the simple image of a face so full of feeling that it looks like the feeling is written all over the person's face. So, the phrase means 'very obvious' or 'easy to see' because you can tell the feeling just by looking at their face.