Other forms: visages
A visage is a person's face and its expression. A stern visage, his ruined visage, a kindly visage.
It is literary and it means the face as something read rather than as a body part — a visage carries an expression, where a face need not. It is fixed in English partly by Shelley's Ozymandias. Note that the word comes from the Latin for sight, the same root as vision and visit.
1nounvisageA person's face and its expression.
“The old sailor's weathered visage slowly broke into a smile.”
visage is a face.
The Latin is to see, the same seeing behind vision. A visage is the face as other people see it.
hooks ontovision
Old French visage comes from Latin visus, sight or appearance, from videre, to see. Vision and visit come from the same seeing.
Latin
vīsus — appearance, sight
Vulgar Latin
*vīsāticum
Anglo-Norman
visage
Middle English
visage
English, today
visage
Built from
From Middle English visage, from Anglo-Norman visage, from Vulgar Latin vīsāticum, derived from Latin vīsus (“appearance, sight”), derived from video (“to see”). Compare vision. See -age.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA