face-saving

British  

adjective

1. maintaining dignity or prestige

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Explanation

Anything face-saving protects you from humiliation. Slip and fall in the school cafeteria, and you might use the face-saving tactic of pretending you did it on purpose. You know, for a joke. The concept of something being face-saving varies between cultures; what's undignified or dishonorable in one might be no big deal in another. It's all about the idea of face, or dignity in front of a social group, and the potential loss of it. In a negotiation between two countries, the winning side sometimes grants some face-saving concessions to the loser, to make their loss less humiliating or embarrassing.

Example Sentences

“They wrote an email to me seemingly to do face saving, which makes me think they’re more desperate than we think.”

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 31, 2025

Historians of the amok now speculate it was a redemptive act of face saving, a way for a young male to massively compensate for a perceived loss of status.

From Slate • Jul. 27, 2012

After the blast from Tass, Jackson and his allies in Congress calmly suggested that the Soviets were merely engaging in some "face saving."

From Time Magazine Archive

Some saw a possibility of national face saving in that the demand for "unconditional surrender" was linked specifically to the Japanese armed forces and made no mention of Emperor Hirohito.

From Time Magazine Archive

Once Egypt's troops were all in place, facing some 30,000 Israeli troops across the border, the Cairo newspaper Al Ahram began the process of face saving short of armed conflict.

From Time Magazine Archive