Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the face.

1709		N. Ward Compleat and Humorous Account of Remarkable Clubs (1756) 52: The mighty Buckler of his hard-favour’d Frontispiece.
1790		Banquet of Wit 18: Captain G—y, an irish gentleman, remarkable for blunders, [...] claps his hand on her posteriors and cries, ‘Pon my sowl, madam, but you have a fine frontispiece!’.
1825		Australian (Sydney) 22 Dec. 4/2: The arrival of some constables [...] relieved his unlucky ‘frontispiece’ from any further violence.
1827		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 15 Apr. 5/1: [H]is frontispiece, most certainly, had nothing to do with the line of beauty [...] his conk having been broken in some of his former contests.
1832		Egan Bk of Sports 202: Neal [...] now and then put in a whisty-castor, which rather changed the look of Sam’s frontispiece.
1836		T. Haliburton Clockmaker I 66: I’ll give her a dose of ‘soft sawder,’ that will take the frown out of her frontishpiece, and make her dial-plate as smooth as a lick of coal varnish.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 11 Feb. 2/3: The superior length of Hough’s arms was felt severely on the frontispiece of baily .
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 10 Sept. n.p.: [M]aking his glove cushion on Sprague’s frontispiece .
1843		Bellew Memoirs of a Griffin I 244: [He] popped in his greasy frontispiece.
1845		J.B. Buckstone Green Bushes I i: It’s a marcy my switch didn’t come in contract with your iligant frontispiece.
1847		Bell’s Life in Sydney 16 Jan. 3/1: [...] depositing the same upon ‘the frontis’ of her masculine assailant, and considerably damaging his upper works.
1851		‘Greenhorn’ [G. Thompson] Bristol Bill 55/1: [A]ll that renders his frontispiece imperfect is the loss of one eye.
1855		(con. 1841) Fights for the Championship 176: Caunt [was] somewhat damaged in the frontispiece.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 18 Apr. 3/5: Joe [...] delivered a heavy blow on Bill’s frontispiece.
1860		Kendal Mercury 19 Aug. 3/1: While she’s stampin’ an’ shootin’ oot hullyballoo! / An’ paintin’ yer frontispiece, as it is noo.
1860		Bell’s Life in Sydney 7 Apr. 4/1: [He] was met flush on the middle of his frontispiece.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1866		Bell’s Life in Sydney 28 Nov. 3/5: A regular rasper on the breadbasket and frontispiece.
1875		Rockhampton Bull. (Qld) 2 Oct. 2/6: He [...] gave the playful husband such a lunge in the frontispiece that he went down like a stone in the mill-pond.
1880		Maitland Mercury (NSW) 24 June 2/2: A man [...] having sunry applications of sticking-plaster on his frontispiece.
1880		Nebraska State Jrnl (Lincoln, NE) 18 Mar. 4/2: In the evening he turned up full as a lord, and his frontispiece looking as though it had come in contact with the hard side of a grindstone.
1891		Sporting Life 28 Mar. n.p.: It must be confessed that the ludicrous was attained when Griffiths subsequently appeared with a short black pipe in his distorted and battered frontispiece [F&H].
1891		Warragul Guardian (Vic.) 22 Dec. 5/3: I have a gimblet. Now keep watch while I spile this fellow’s frontispiece.
1903		A. Kleberg Slang Fables from Afar 8: Jess had a handsome Frontispiece.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 19 Aug. 3/4: His frequent taps on McColl’s frontispiece left it in a much damaged condition.
1914		Chuckles 10 Jan. 1: Don’t smile all at once, or you might break your frontispiece.
1918		Aussie (France) 18 Jan. One morning he [Pte. Leadswinger] lined up as usual, with a ‘the-world-has-got-me-snouted-just-a-treat’ expression on his frontispiece.
1940		M. Marples Public School Slang 73: FACE: In the days of Tom Brown frontispiece was a fashionable term: later came mug and phiz or phizog ( =physiognomy), all rather juvenile words.

2. the forehead.

1860

Chambers’s Journal XIII 368: His forehead is his frontispiece [F&H].

3. (Aus.) a facial expression.

1904

Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 21 Dec. 3/3: [H]e didn't Bee tbe joke. So he sulked. ‘You needn’t put on such a frontispiece,’ she said in a pet.

4. the nose.

1906

S. Ford Shorty McCabe 39: Never saw a finer specimen of hand-decorated frontispiece in my life. It wasn’t just red, nor purple. It was as near blue as a nose can get.