"visibly sad" is a correct and usable phrase in written English
It means that someone's emotions or feelings are clearly and noticeable sad to others. Example: After her dog passed away, Sarah was visibly sad for weeks.
But many of them also exuded an unfamiliar wariness that lacked the spark usually accompanying a first day of school, and some were visibly sad.
He's… genuinely, visibly sad! He's… gone to the toilet to cry! Alright, this is fine.
If a patient is visibly sad or distressed, or positively happy, it is easy to infer their experience is negative or positive.
"I just gave away this diary, as I do not want to remind myself of those dark memories," she said, visibly sad.
The black woman holding the baby is neither visibly happy nor sad.
In his globe-trotting Tribe series two years ago, the TV explorer Bruce Parry was visibly moved by the sad fate of the Penan, a forest-dwelling tribe in Borneo.
"The sad reality today is that visibly-Jewish French citizens are subject to a range of disturbing reactions, from latent anti-Semitism to acts of extreme violence - a number of which have resulted in deaths.
"These have been sad days for the homeland," said a visibly moved Correa during his regular Saturday TV broadcast.
Radford is visibly upset when I mention Hereford's recent closure - "sad isn't the word" - but he has the well-honed perspective you expect of a man of his years.
Ford's visibly shaken state as she recounted her trauma was a sad reminder that survivors are often not only denied, but shamed for coming forward.
It builds through all sorts of nuances towards some piercingly sad scenes of hospitalised patients, dosed to stupefaction, whose difficulties are visibly more than mental – poverty, violence, accident, the world crowding in.
