facially

From facial + -ly.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfeɪʃəli/, (rarer) /ˈfeɪʃli/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

facially (not comparable)

1. Using or involving the face.
   • 2012, Janet Shibley Hyde, Nicole Else-Quest, Half the Human Experience‎^[1]:

     "The results showed that women were significantly more facially expressive than men for all emotion clips."

2. (especially law) In a facial manner; on its face; as something appears to an initial impression, prior to a deeper analysis.

   Near-synonym: superficially

   If a judicial authorization is facially valid, the party challenging it will have the burden of proving that it was invalid.

   • 2023 July 7, Justice Anne MacTavish, “Haynes v. Canada (Attorney General), 2023 FCA 158”, in CanLII‎^[2], retrieved 27 October 2024:

     [I]t is no answer to a claim of discrimination from a litigant in a wheelchair to say that everyone is expected to climb the stairs in front of a courthouse to have their day in Court, and that the wheelchair-bound litigant was treated no differently than anyone else. Facially neutral legislation can be discriminatory [...]

   • 2025 January 24, George F. Will, “There are ample reasons, not about his personal life, for rejecting Hegseth. Opinion”, in Washington Post‎^[3]:

     An independent forensic accountant found evidence of gross financial mismanagement while Hegseth was administering two small nonprofits. This information is redundant evidence of what is facially obvious: his unreadiness to manage the Pentagon’s almost $900 billion budget […]