What do you call the facial expression or the state just before bursting into tears?

Question

What do you call this facial expression that forms just before bursting into tears? (Especially when a baby has been treated in a way he/she didn't expect and consider it unfair or feels neglected. Of course this pitiful and sad expression with lower lip protrusion is most commonly seen in younger kids; and is not acceptable for adults or they will be considered to react childish.)

Actually I need to know the answer to complete these sentences :

"When the father yelled angrily at the baby, he (the baby) ..(?) and then burst into tears. "

"When the mom took the toy from the baby, he ...(?) and cried."

PS: We have a phrasal verb in Farsi for describing this state and we use it for kids or adults, but when we hear it about a kid we would definitely think of a baby with this facial expression specially with the protruded lower lip. For adults, we would think of them in the state just before bursting into tears, for example; some winners react like this when they recieve their awards or when they are about to make a speech.

Note: Since I need to complete those sentences and they are about kids, if I know the term used for talking about/ referring to this kids' facial expression or state, that would solve my problem.

Answer 1

"When the mom took the toy from the baby, ..."

"When the father yelled angrily at the baby, ..."

his (little) face crumpled and then he burst into inconsolable tears.

Crumple - to become incurved or crushed together; to contract and shrivel up; to become creased or wrinkled by being crushed together (OED) - suggests the important (as I see it) involuntary aspect of the facial expressions in the images.

Answer 2

Quiver: tremble involuntary, the action the lower lip does when a person is about to burst into tears or sob loudly.

• His lower lip began to quiver, his face contorted, and the tears began.
• Tears welled from his eyes now, his lower lip quivering...
• ... her lower lip quivered, her eyes were puffy and red. She was on the brink of crying again.

Puckered: to draw together, crease, fold, and wrinkled. How a person's face appears when they can't hold back their tears.

• the child’s face puckered, ready to cry

• Speaking to the infant in a pitiful, compassionate voice, he said, “Oh! is the baby hurt? Poor thing. What did you do? Does it hurt? Show it to Mama.” Sure enough, my happy little cousin puckered up, started crying and made his way to his mother for emotional support.

• The child puckered up her mouth in an effort to stop the tears but it was useless. They flowed down her dirt streaked cheeks...

Oxford Dictionaries: pucker, quiver

Clair Danes, alias Carrie Mathison in the TV series Homeland, mastering the lower-lip quiver

Answer 3

The term is to pout:

• to ​push the ​lower ​lip ​forward to show you are ​annoyed, or to ​push both ​lips ​forward in a ​sexually ​attractive way:

  • Vanessa always pouts if she doesn't get what she ​wants. Caroline pouts her ​lips when she's putting on ​lipstick.

Answer 4

Welling up.

"When the father yelled angrily at the baby ,he welled up and then burst into tears. "

"When the mom took the toy from the baby, he welled up and cried."

Answer 5

The expression is called a pout:

Push one’s lips or one’s bottom lip forward as an expression of petulant annoyance or in order to make oneself look sexually attractive.

In the case of children, it's the former definition, of course.

Pout (as a noun meaning a facial expression) appears to be not as old as the verb form. The first recorded use (from Chambers) is ca. 1591 in Nash's Astrologicall Prognostication:

As a verb, it was known as early as 1300. One of the most familiar fairly early appearances (1592) is in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love.

Answer 6

Each of these pictured children has a petted lip (noun).

The term is very well understood in Ireland/Scotland, but I'm not sure about elsewhere!

Quoting Dictionary of the Scots Language

petted lip: The sign of a spoilt or sulky child, that is, the lower lip protruding in front of the upper lip:

Never mind the petted lip. You're not going and that's that.

Also from Oxford English Dictionary:

petted - Offended or sulky at feeling slighted or ill-used; piqued; pettish. Now chiefly in petted lip n. the protrusion of the lower lip in front of the upper, a pout.

As a verb, one could say :

"When the father yelled angrily at the baby, he petted his lip and then burst into tears. ".

Answer 7

Grimace : a facial expression usually of disgust, disapproval, or pain - M-W

With reference to your sample sentences:

"When the father yelled angrily at the baby, he (the baby) grimaced and then burst into tears. "

"When the mom took the toy from the baby, he grimaced and cried."

Answer 8

I suggest "cloud up":

cloud up: 1. Lit. [for the sky] to get cloudy, as if it were going to rain. 2. Fig. [for someone] to grow very sad, as if to cry.

^{Source: The Free Dictionary}

"When the father yelled angrily at the baby, he clouded up and then burst into tears."

Answer 9

These expressions, per se, don't have a common English name, like grin does. "Petted lip" is probably correct, but I'd never heard it before, and I used to teach animation. "Grimace" is correct, physiologically, but would connote anger or disgust to most readers. "Pout" is a lip motion, and the brows are doing a lot of work in those expressions.

One often sees something like "the child's face fell," even though it's the body language that falls (shoulders sagging, head bowing, spine curving) more than face parts. Also, faces "crumple", certainly that baby's face is crumpled.

Also, someone please add a HAPPY baby: faces that sad hurt the feelings of even casual viewers! :)

Answer 10

The state just before bursting into tears is sometimes called on the verge of tears.

See for example, this dictionary.cambridge.com page for on the verge of ("If you are on the verge of something [...], you are very ​close to ​experiencing it") and the second item under verge¹ at freedictionary.com ("The point beyond which an action, state, or condition is likely to begin or occur"), which gives on the verge of tears as an example.

Answer 11

The most common way I have heard this expressed is "they looked like they were about to cry." Sometimes, it will be said that a person's lower lip started to quiver. I'll be interested to see if someone comes up with a really good answer, because I really think this is a bit of a gap in the English lexicon.

Answer 12

Not sure why frown hasn't been mentioned yet:

Furrow one’s brow in an expression of disapproval, displeasure, or concentration (OED)

True, the dictionary definition makes no mention of the mouth. However, when frowning due to being sad or upset, as the question describes, it's generally understood that the mouth also takes a particular shape, including pouting lips and downward-turned corners.

In fact, if you ask someone to draw a frowning face, they're likely to draw an "inverse smiley face" without any eyebrows at all. For example, the ubiquitous emoticon :( is commonly referred to as the "frowny face" or "frown".

Answer 13

For anyone older than a baby:

Verklempt: overcome with emotion; clenched

Yiddish origin

Answer 14

I think the phrase "lost his composure" well represents that pre-tears emotional state the OP wishes to express in the example sentences. That face in the example images is most commonly seen in children because adults have generally mastered the art of maintaining their composure around other people. If you really need a single word, the word that comes to mind is crestfallen. (disappointed and ​sad because of having ​failed ​unexpectedly) But "When mom took the toy away, he became crestfallen and cried" sounds more like a writer trying to force a square word into a round sentence to me than something like "...his countenance morphed rapidly toward sadness as he lost a brief tussle with his composure and burst into tears"

Answer 15

Consider, crease

Cause a crease to appear temporarily in (the face or its features), typically as a result of the expression of an emotion or feeling. ODO

His [little] face creased and tears welled in his eyes

Answer 16

One might say, after having his candy taken away, that "the child's face contorted as he tried to hold back tears".

The word pout is not really appropriate. In American English, pouting is melodramatic or insincere. A child might pout (stick out their lip, whine, etc., but without tears) after being told "no" to more ice cream as a way to get their parents to give in and say "yes". This is not the same as a child who is about to cry because they skinned their knee, for example.

Answer 17

While you are looking for a verb, the noun grief and its many synonyms define this expression and feeling very well.

grief

noun: deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death. "she was overcome with grief"

synonyms:

sorrow, misery, sadness, anguish, pain, distress, heartache, heartbreak, agony, torment, affliction, suffering, woe, desolation, dejection, despair;

Answer 18

I think 'stricken' can apply but only to the stage before tears of unhappiness or grief. Clare Danes in that gif certainly looks stricken.

Quoting Oxford Dictionaries

stricken

seriously affected by an undesirable condition or unpleasant feeling.

"Raymond was stricken with grief"

(Of a person’s face or look) showing great distress:

"she looked at Anne's stricken face, contorted with worry"

Answer 19

This is not an exact answer to your question (few of the answers here are) but the truth is that a very good word for what you want to express is consternation.

Full Definition of consternation : amazement or dismay that hinders or throws into confusion

--Webster's

noun 1. a sudden, alarming amazement or dread that results in utter confusion; dismay.

--Dictionary.com

Answer 20

Quiver is the answer to your question.

Or in a more casual term sour lips is what most of my friends call their babies in the moment just before they burst to cry.

"Oh no, she is doing sour lips...."

Answer 21

scrunched up face

scrunch (v.)

(transitive) To crumple and squeeze to make more compact.

(with object "one's face") To contract the muscles of one's face so as to draw their facial features together, out of pain, discomfort, uncertainty, etc. Wiktionary

---

But she'd taken one look at my scrunched up face and all she'd said was, “Please don't cry!” Martin Guinness; Melting

Kevin turned to her with a scrunched up face and tear filled eyes. Jeffrey Matthews; Carry Us All

"That's not fair!" he yelled, but his scrunched up face told me he was fighting back tears. Susan Calhoun; Freeway Close

Answer 22

The word used by my GM as an adjective was "schipsche." Whenever a baby would begin to wrinkle its face and its lower lip would begin to tremble & protrude before crying she'd say "Awe, look at him with the schipsche (pron, ship shuh) lip. I do not know whether this was German, Yiddish, Hebrew, or some other language's slang and I never asked her the origin of it and have never been able to find it in English, German, Yiddish or Hebrew dictionaries. It could just have been one of those "family" words because no middle-easterner, European, Israeli or German has ever heard of it.

Answer 23

I have a possible neologism for this common and sorry state:

liquiver...

conjoining the sense of welling-up or becoming wet or liquid AND that quivery thing we do when we try to fight it.

Or I guess one could say:

puckquify

:@)