怖い顔

J

Jini3

Banned
French
Hi.
I wanted to understand the meaning of "怖い顔". I know 怖い mean 'scary' but I noticed in some sentences that 怖い顔 is more like "stern look, grim face".
For context I need, it is a character who gives his sister a stern look. (彼は妹に厳しい表情を向ける) and she stops doing something because of his 怖い顔

Thanks.
 
    • She got scared and stiff/physically-hard(= "frozen") by his stern/grim look.

    The etymology of kowa-i = hard (as in kowa-i go-han = boiled rice that has set/become hard or harder and difficult to chew) > hardening, tensing, stiffening, mentally-"freezing" > scary.

    You know Japanese often fail to tell subjectivities from objectivities:

    Kaze ga samui = tsumetai.
    Futokoro ga samui.
     
    Last edited by a moderator:
    Jini3 said:
    So in this case we can see it is more "grim look" than "scary face"?
    Click to expand...

    The best wording will, as always, depend on the overall context. For instance, we might say "the look on his face persuaded her to stop doing what she was doing," thereby simply implying the idea of 怖い.

    You will always receive better suggestions if you provide several lines of dialog as context.
     
    The context is this : 彼は妹に厳しい表情を向ける.
    And the person stops what they did because he made a 怖い顔
     
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