rictus

English

From Latin rictus, participle of ringor (“open the mouth wide”)

rictus (plural rictuses)

1899 - Victor Hugo, The Memoirs of Victor Hugo
Amid a thick, bristling beard, a nose like an owl's beak and a mouth whose corners were drawn by a wild-beast-like rictus were just discernible.
1916 - James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces.
1990 - Voivod, Nothingface
Valves plugs pumps to erase/ rictus from my face.
1993 – Wolfenstein 3D, Episode 3, Level 9, after defeating Hitler
The absolute incarnation of evil, Adolf Hitler, lies at your feet in a pool of his own blood. His wrinkled, crimson-splattered visage still strains, a jagged-toothed rictus trying to cry out. Insane even in death. Your lips pinched in bitter victory, you kick his head off his remains and spit on his corpse.
2001 — Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl, p 56
It squinted at her through the hated light, its brow a rictus of pain and fear.
2008 — Sean Williams, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, p 81
The apprentice watched his Master, pain twisting his features into a rictus.

Any open-mouthed expression

rictus m (plural rictus)

From ringor (“I gape, show my teeth, snarl; I am vexed”) +‎ -tus (action noun forming suffix).

rictus m (genitive rictūs); fourth declension

Fourth declension.

rictus in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
rictus in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
rictus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)

rictus m (plural rictus)

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