Meaning
To suffer public humiliation or a visible loss of reputation and standing, especially before people whose good opinion matters to you. Slightly formal or journalistic, and most often found in discussions of reputation, diplomacy, or organisational politics. Compared with the Chinese concept it translates, the English phrase flattens an elaborate social calculus of dignity, prestige, and precedence into simple public embarrassment. Neutral, slightly formal idiom that describes public standing rather than private embarrassment. Regional use: General English (calqued from Chinese).
Origin
A calque of a Chinese idiom, diu lian, literally 'lose face', meaning to suffer public disgrace so complete that one can hardly appear in public; the scholar Michael Keevak notes the phrase reached English partly through Chinese Pidgin English and that the fully Chinese attribution is only part of the story. The Phrase Finder traces the earliest documented English use to 1876, when Sir Robert Hart, the long-serving head of China's imperial customs service, wrote in his essays on the Chinese question that the government had consented to 'arrangements by which China has lost face'. The familiar antonym save face is an English invention with no matching Chinese phrase, first found in print in the Harmsworth Magazine of June 1899 ('That will save my face in the City'), and English went on to derive face-saving and loss of face from the same image.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- face-saving (derived adjective)
- losing face
- loss of face
- lost face
Usage Examples
- The manager admitted the pricing error rather than let the team lose face in front of the client.
- Negotiators crafted the compromise so that neither government lost face domestically.
- He refused to back down, fearing that any concession would mean losing face with the board.