What does lose face mean?

📊Word stats

Known in English

Most English speakers know it from the news and from talk about work. Few know it is a word-for-word copy of Chinese.

Said in China today

Chinese speakers say 丢脸 every day, but often for small things, like a quick “so embarrassing!”

Polite

The phrase itself is not rude, and newspapers print it all the time. Telling someone that they lost face, to their face, is less kind.

Freshness

It is almost two hundred years old and very steady. About as many people look it up now as last year.

👀Spotted in the wild

🛠️How to use it

• lose face in front of someoneHe didn’t want to lose face in front of his team.
• be afraid of losing faceShe was afraid of losing face, so she never asked for help.
• without losing faceHow can the mayor change her mind without losing face?
• a loss of face (noun)Backing down now would be a huge loss of face for the government.
• save face / a face-saving dealThe new deal let both sides save face.

🚫Don’t say it like this

• ✗ Sounds offI lost my face at the meeting.

  ✓ Say thisI lost face at the meeting.

  The idiom has no “my” and no article. “Lose my face” sounds like your face fell off.

• ✗ Sounds offShe lost face when she dropped her coffee.

  ✓ Say thisShe was embarrassed when she dropped her coffee.

  In English, lose face is about respect and status, not small accidents. Chinese 丢脸 can cover small moments, but the English phrase is bigger.

• ✗ Sounds offDon’t lose his face in the meeting.

  ✓ Say thisDon’t make him lose face in the meeting.

  Losing face is something that happens to a person. To cause it, say “make someone lose face” or “embarrass someone.”

🎯lose face or not?

Is each of these lose face? Pick an answer to find out.

1. A leader promises never to back down, then backs down in public a week later.

   lose faceNot lose face

2. You spill water on your shirt while you are home alone.

   lose faceNot lose face

3. A manager is corrected by an intern in front of the whole team, and everyone sees he was wrong.

   lose faceNot lose face

4. You quietly fix a typo in your email before anyone reads it.

   lose faceNot lose face

🧬The lose face family

• save faceTo avoid looking foolish or weak, or to protect your reputation.Lose face’s partner. English made it up later from lose face, so the borrowing had a child.
• 丢人 diūrén“Lose person”: an everyday Chinese word that means almost the same as 丢脸.Chinese has two ways to say “how embarrassing,” in case one is not enough.
• 面子 miànzi“Face” in the sense of prestige and status, as in 没面子 méi miànzi, “to have no face.”If 脸 is your character, 面子 is your reputation. You can 给面子 gěi miànzi, “give face,” to someone, too.

📜Where it came from

1. 1830sLose face first appears in pidgin English, the mixed trade language that Chinese and English-speaking merchants used, as a translation of a Chinese expression [3]. Etymonline dates it to 1835 and gives the Chinese source in an old spelling, “tu lien,” which is diūliǎn in pinyin [2].
2. 1898Save face appears in English, formed from lose face [2].
3. 1940sFor about a century, English writers used face in a negative way, tied to Chinese people. In the 1940s, anthropologists began to change this. They separated 脸 liǎn from 面子 miànzi and argued that face exists in many cultures [3].
4. TodayLose face is ordinary English, used most often about leaders, governments, and anyone who would rather not admit a mistake.

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