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By weird-looking I mean something like this, a facial expression that people often use when being photographed.

Man with head thrust forward from shoulders, wide eyes, slightly furrowed eyebrows, and slightly pursed lips.

I checked Thesaurus, but the words--freaky, funky, kooky--don't seem to have the "looking" part. (I'm purely referring to the physical appearance, not the behavior.)

Is there a word/phrase that is close to that meaning?

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    Is there a word in your language for this?
    – Mitch
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 13:33
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    Pretty sure the word for weird-looking is weird-looking. :)
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 15:23
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    It's a specific pose associated with photography, especially selfies, so this question is actually asking about specifically relevant slang terms. I have edited the question to point in that direction, so please roll back if that isn't what you're interested in, janoChen.
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 21:29
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    I might cause that pose "bug eyed". (Although there's something a bit fishy about it too.)
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 2:07
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    This question loses much of its value without the photograph of the person making the funny face, which has disappeared since I posted my answer several months ago. Can you either restore it the original image or replace it with a similar photo?
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Oct 13, 2015 at 5:37

5 Answers 5

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In the particular photo you offer as an example, the person is doing two things: bugging his eyes and doing some version of duck lips or a duck face. Here is the entry for bug-eyed in The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994):

bug-eyed adj. having staring eyes, as from fear or astonishment

[First citation:] 1922 in OED2.

Duck face is a much more recent slang term, dating to 2006, according to the extensive history of the term at Know Your Meme. That site defines duck face as

a pejorative term for a facial expression made by pressing one's lips together into the shape of a duck's bill.

There are, of course, more and less exaggerated forms of this expression, and some variations have their own slang names. For example, Know Your Meme also has an entry for sparrow face (evidently a translation of the original Japanese チュン顔 or ちゅん顔, which the site says would more literally be rendered as "chirp face"), which it dates to February 2013 and defines as

a facial expression made by slightly parting one’s lips with eyes wide open.

Technically, I would say that the guy in the OP's photo is doing a manic sparrow face, rather than a duck face. The effect of the combined positioning of eyes and lips is to produce a look that is only slightly more exaggerated than the one that male model Derek Zoolander calls "Blue Steel" (or "Ferrari" or "The Tigre") in the movie Zoolander.

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  • The original question was edited earlier today, and I see that the photograph has disappeared—a hazard of image-based language questions, I suppose.
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Oct 10, 2015 at 22:04
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grotesque is a possibility although it is perhaps too extreme in this case. It refers to appearance.

grotesque

/ɡrə(ʊ)ˈtɛsk/

adjective: grotesque

  1. comically or repulsively ugly or distorted. "a figure wearing a grotesque mask"

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You could say that he is an oddball or has an oddball appearance.

noun: a strange or eccentric person.

adjective: strange; bizarre.

(OED)

EDIT: Thinking about it, the exmaple you have provided is of a goggle-eyed person.

Having staring or protuberant eyes

(OED)

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I'd guess the best approach would be the simplest, and tchrist's comment is appropriate. He's weird-looking or He looks weird.

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Because of the context you might not be looking for synonyms of weird but different ways to describe how they are weird, maybe they appear; - stiff - uneasy - unnatural - awkward - self-conscious - artificial, is that the kind of thing you're looking for?

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