as in features
formal
the appearance of a person's face; a person's facial features
He and his son have the same distinctive physiognomy.
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Recent Examples of physiognomy
Guston’s first comic for The Junior Times, a sparse strip drawn at age 12, introduced Little Snowball, a Black youth bearing exaggerated racial physiognomy and dialect.
—
Walker Mimms, New York Times, 4 June 2024
Her husband would catch her staring clinically at his physiognomy.
—Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 9 Jan. 2024
And, of course, there was the perennial punch line of physiognomy: sight gags, sketches, and songs that depicted Jewish bodies as misshapen and absurd.
—Jody Rosen, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2023
Meanwhile, a younger generation has brought new shades of irony to riffs on Jewish identity and physiognomy.
—Jody Rosen, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2023
See All Example Sentences for physiognomy
Walker Mimms, New York Times, 4 June 2024
Her husband would catch her staring clinically at his physiognomy.
—Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 9 Jan. 2024
And, of course, there was the perennial punch line of physiognomy: sight gags, sketches, and songs that depicted Jewish bodies as misshapen and absurd.
—Jody Rosen, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2023
Meanwhile, a younger generation has brought new shades of irony to riffs on Jewish identity and physiognomy.
—Jody Rosen, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2023
See All Example Sentences for physiognomy
Recent Examples of Synonyms for physiognomy
Noun
-
Still, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that about 34 people a day in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that’s one person every 42 minutes.—
Josh Max,
Forbes.com,
9 July 2025
-
And while a normal person will just digest that and process it, an allergic person actually sees this as a foreign threat.—
Josh Hammer,
MSNBC Newsweek,
9 July 2025
Noun
-
Roebuck made one further appearance for Barcelona against Levante in February but did not feature again for the club.—
Charlotte Harpur,
New York Times,
8 July 2025
-
Stephenson has thrown just one inning as a member of the Angels, hurting himself in his second appearance back from Tommy John surgery on May 30.—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
8 July 2025
Cite this Entry
“Physiognomy.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/physiognomy. Accessed 22 Jul. 2025.
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