adjective

• Humorless and disapproving.

  ‘don't be so po-faced about everything’

  More example sentences

  • ‘So it goes with the po-faced and utterly humourless 911.’
  • ‘Any social commentary is mostly of the exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin variety and is ultimately po-faced and humourless.’
  • ‘What a depressing lack of sense too from this increasingly po-faced Government, which displayed once more its desire to interfere, to have something to say about everything.’
  • ‘Watching a po-faced segment where a schoolgirl is falsely led to believe her parents have died from heroin abuse in an attempt to ward her off drugs elicits a mixed response.’
  • ‘Normally po-faced and formal, these parties give the girls their only chance of social interaction, which for them means dancing like mad and giggling at the ineptitude of their partners.’
  • ‘That's disappeared in recent years - the Dalton films were very po-faced and they've had trouble shaking that seriousness off.’
  • ‘It assumes a cultural context where prejudices such as homophobia are understood, and where laughter becomes a weapon to be used against them, as well as against the po-faced extremes of political correctness.’
  • ‘It's not just the tedium of the job - literally a daily grind, as they mash packets of powder into useable paint - it's the po-faced seriousness with which everyone around them gets on with things.’
  • ‘Whilst it could be argued that it is po-faced to talk about truth in the biography of a fictional character, the counter-argument is that the constant toying with fiction and fact is ultimately frustrating.’
  • ‘The downside is that all we have here is a very long, very po-faced, mystic, pseudo-religious battle between our old mates good and evil.’
  • ‘It takes that understanding and throws it back in our faces, challenging us to participate in what is really a sustained assault on the cult of po-faced victimology and its politically correct excesses.’
  • ‘While our po-faced American cousins talk in learned terms of David's ‘high art’, we taunt the illusionist with bacon sandwiches and try to cut off his water supply.’
  • ‘They can be slightly po-faced affairs and often there will be slightly mental or self-obsessed people in the audience who ask strange or self-aggrandising questions.’
  • ‘The thing that really grates, though, is the po-faced sermonising on global warming and heavy-handed attempts to make Serious Points about Serious Issues.’
  • ‘These East Africans have a healthy, smart, informed scepticism and the media manages to remain admirably po-faced when dealing with delicate political issues.’
  • ‘We imposed it, in our po-faced, disciplinarian way, on our colonial subjects around the world, and they loved it so much that they are still using it, long after we've gone.’
  • ‘Returning to his point about some punk bands being too po-faced to pogo or even crack a smile, ironically he reckons that the punk scene could do with unfolding its arms and letting its hair down.’
  • ‘It is all probably sensible advice, but if you are an anxious parent you will be able to look after your kids already, and if you don't care then a po-faced web site isn't going to make a difference.’
  • ‘In the British press at least, there is a tradition of publishing spoof articles in as po-faced a fashion as possible on April 1st and seeing how many people fall for them.’
  • ‘Would I have been too po-faced to fancy them at 18?’

  Synonyms

  demure, proper, prim and proper, formal, stuffy, strait-laced, prudish