faceplant

/ˈfeɪsˌplænt/noun, verb

faceplant is a noun meaning “The act of landing face first, as a result of an accident or error” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-C-E-P-L-A-N-T and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 22 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of faceplant is faceplants.

What does faceplant mean?

noun

1
informalThe act of landing face first, as a result of an accident or error.
The skater slipped off his board and did a painful faceplant.
2
Death or defeat in a multiplayer online game.
3
A wrestling move in which an attacking wrestler forces an opponent down to the mat face-first without a headlock or facelock.

verb

1
informalTo land face first.
2
informalTo completely fumble or fail in an activity, usually in a spectacular fashion.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce faceplant?

UK /ˈfeɪsˌplɑːnt/
US /ˈfeɪsˌplænt/

Faceplant has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-faceplant.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of faceplant

faceplants plural, present, singular, he/she/it
face-plant
faceplanting participle, present
faceplanted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is faceplant?

Faceplant appears about once in every 22 million words in written English, the 143,405th most frequent word form in the list.

faceplant0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Faceplant in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
German	Auf-die-Schnauze-Fliegen, Auf-die-Fresse-Fallen (act of landing face first), auf die Fresse fliegen, auf die Schnauze fallen (to land face first)
Spanish	plantación de rostro, plantío de pico (act of landing face first), plantarse el rostro, plantar pico (to land face first)
French	se planter la gueule, se péter la gueule (to land face first)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does faceplant come from?

From face + plant (“place, set firmly”). Originally skateboarding and snowboarding slang, a humorous variant of handplant, which is an intentional technique in these sports.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).