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Face at full value

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To accept something at its apparent or stated worth without questioning ulterior motives or hidden meanings.

Detailed Definition
This phrase asks the reader to consider the seductive simplicity of taking things as they appear, without suspicious inquiry into what lies beneath the surface. In poetry, it raises epistemological questions about reading—whether poems can or should be taken at face value, and what is lost or gained by looking past the literal. Poets invoke it to explore naivety, trust, and the dangers of credulity in a world where surfaces routinely deceive. It also celebrates a certain kind of faith—the willingness to accept beauty, love, or goodness without relentless interrogation of its cost. The phrase thus sits at the intersection of skepticism and faith that much lyric poetry inhabits.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about trust might explore the decision to accept another's word at face value — and what it costs and what it gives to resist the habit of suspicious interpretation; In a poem about reading poetry, to take a poem at face value might be proposed as both naivety and a form of respect — the decision to receive what the poem offers without immediately dismantling it with interpretation; The phrase suits philosophical poems about epistemology — the impossibility of knowing whether any account of the world is accurate, and the exhausting alternative to accepting some things at face value; A love poem might describe the act of accepting the beloved's declaration at face value as an act not of naivety but of grace — the decision to believe what is offered even knowing that belief carries risk; In a poem about childhood, to take the world at face value is the child's natural mode — and the loss of that capacity, as experience teaches that surfaces routinely deceive, is one of the central elegiac subjects of the lyric tradition; The phrase works reflexively in poems about language itself — the question of whether words can ever be taken at face value, or whether every utterance must be read against the grain of its own possible self-deception
Additional Notes
The more common phrase is “take at face value,” so “face at full value” may be treated as a variant or gloss. The idea is acceptance without probing beneath appearance. In poetry, it relates to masks, surfaces, portraits, coins, and social performance. It is useful when a speaker learns that literal appearance is not the same as truth.
Also Known As
Take at face value Accept without question
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