Facial Expressions

I like dictionaries, but they really drop the ball when it comes to expressions. Go to your favorite dictionary, and look up "sneer", or "grimace", or "leer". Completely useless. Even "frown" doesn't get a fair treatment from the lexicographers.

For instance, Dictionary.com defines a grimace as "a facial expression, often contorted, that indicates disapproval, pain, etc." I already knew that. What I did not know, and what I still do not know, is what a grimace looks like. "Contorted" is not enough. Is the mouth open? Are the teeth showing? What are the eyebrows doing? Leers sometimes indicate lustfulness, but what do leers look like? Is a leer just whatever you're doing when you ogle someone? I don't think we should define our facial expressions by what mental states produce them.

How am I supposed to tell if someone is sneering at me? I *hear* that it sometimes involves curled lips. But some people can't curl one side of their lip (I can't curl the right side). Are they still sneering? The dictionary is where we turn when we wonder what words mean. If it can't tell us what a grimace is, can America as a society be said to have any understanding of grimaces? I'm sure I can find someone to tell me what a grimace is, but without the universalization that dictionaries provide, how can I tell he's not lying or idiosyncratic?

Maybe Americans really do have widely variant opinions of what a grimace is. Maybe dodging the issue is the dictionary's way of telling us. If it comes to that, though, Dictionary.com could save us a lot of time. Just append a "No one will understand this word" tag to questionable items like "leer". There are lots of useful things a dictionary could be doing, only don't clutter up our minds with vestigial half-definitions like this. We all know that's not what a grimace is.