po-faced

Related to po-faced: bask, contemp

po-faced

Having an overly stern, disapproving, and humorless demeanor. Primarily heard in UK. The film works because it isn't po-faced about the issue. Instead, it uses humour to great effect in highlighting just how multifaceted such a difficult topic can be. I'll never forget our bizarre school dances, with dozens of hormone-frenzied teens under the watchful eyes of po-faced priests.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • corncob
  • have a corncob up (one's) butt
  • in dispute
  • look askance upon (someone or something)
  • look sideways at
  • look sideways at (someone or something)
  • in good heart
References in periodicals archive
He isn't `robbing' the pensions funds - he is denying them tax breaks, and as to whether he is po-faced or not - what the heck does it matter what he looks like
You don't need a po-faced, long, detailed explanation - for some people, the simple answer is 'I thought this policy was giving me valuable additional protection from fraud, now I've found it wasn't'."
But there's no need for all period dramas to be po-faced, is there?
Among the po-faced was a Ken Stringer, CEO of Alliance, an addicts' support group.
"I've always been a bit po-faced about the idea that all you need to do to be put in the hallowed halls of method acting with Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro is put on loads of weight.
Phillips said the commission would react swiftly to any serious evidence of racism, but over-reacting to "jokes" risked making it appear like "po-faced thought police".
We have endured po-faced politicians and city executives avoiding to mention that this state of affairs was predicted over a century ago by Karl Marx as a result of ruthless pursuit of profit.
Or am I being a po-faced protestant party pooper about what is waste anyway?
But while the writers can be scathing in print, even the most po-faced know-it-all is generally courteous when they talk to players in person.
Stone-faced over a concrete structure, the Booth and Lederboer building was a chokingly buttoned-up, po-faced compromise between neo-Georgian and Modernism (AR November 1957).
"We were trying to get across that ceramics can be fun and it shouldn't be po-faced and very serious.
THE torrent of po-faced hypocrisy that followed last weekend's Old Firm match kept me chuckling for days.
Next to the video, the photographs tended to lose some of their po-faced autonomy: Everything excluded by the earlier project was seemingly replenished by the later.
Learning to crack a smile is a serious business, as po-faced Germans go through the painstaking and sometimes painful process of discovering mirth.
ARE we seriously living in such a po-faced, joyless, miserable sporting world that when a referee starts a game of football with a game of rock, paper, scissors, he gets suspended for three weeks?