rictus

[Klimt]

[rik-tuh s]

1. the gape of the mouth of a bird.
2. the gaping or opening of the mouth; a fixed or unnatural grin or grimace, as in horror or death

his mouth gaping in a kind of rictus of startled alarm

He drives an immaculate car and at parties his sartorial appearance leaves others betraying a rictus of admiration.

the flesh of his leg had been ripped away, exposing the bone. Pollard's face was a rictus of agony, his lips peeled back over his teeth, and gusts of pain were rolling through his body...

His face was distorted in a rictus grin that showed his back teeth. The knife was in his right hand...The rictus grin remained, his head came up, he raised his left hand slowly, plucked out the eye with a soft snapping of a gray cord ...

The thin man arched backward, bending, bending, bending impossibly, face locked in rictus, and then slumped forward over...

[Slava]

a fixed or unnatural grin or grimace, as in horror or death

He drives an immaculate car and at parties his sartorial appearance leaves others betraying a rictus of admiration.

Query, if the definition is as above, how can one have a rictus as in the quote afterward? There is no death, and just what might a horror of admiration be?

[Audiendus]

a fixed or unnatural grin or grimace, as in horror or death

He drives an immaculate car and at parties his sartorial appearance leaves others betraying a rictus of admiration.

Query, if the definition is as above, how can one have a rictus as in the quote afterward?

The essential meaning of rictus is "gape", not necessarily of an unpleasant kind. I suppose the idea in this quote is of an involuntary, sustained, gaping expression.

[LukeJavan8]

The TV show "Bones" has plenty of cases of
rictus.