Meanings
- medicineThe pallid or shrunken face of someone about to die.
Your child comes into the world with the symptoms of death; the facies Hippocratica forms the character of its physiognomy, and the prognostic of its fate.
1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France2 more examples
Carew shifted his position, and once more looked anxiously at the haggard face on the pillow. It bore certain tokens which in his ignorance he fancied were characteristic of the facies hippocratica […].
1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 191Hippocratics prided themselves on their clinical acuity, being quick to pick up telltale symptoms, as with the facies hippocratica, the facial look of the dying: ‘a protrusive nose, hollow eyes, sunken temples, cold ears that are drawn in with the lobes turned outward, the forehead's skin rough and tense like parchment, and the whole face greenish or black or blue-grey or leaden’.
1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 59Synonyms: Hippocratic face
Synonyms & antonyms
nounThe pallid or shrunken face of someone about to die.
Origin
Latin; so called because the effect was described by Hippocrates.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
facies Hippocratica. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/facies%20Hippocratica
“facies Hippocratica.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/facies%20Hippocratica. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “facies Hippocratica,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/facies%20Hippocratica.
Source: facies Hippocratica on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.