What is the meaning of 'to lose face'?


When you say that someone has ‘lost face’, you mean that the individual has lost some of the respect that others had for him. Something that the person said or did has made those around him stop respecting him. When you lose face, you are usually publicly humiliated.

The pilots didn’t want to call off the strike because they were afraid to lose face.

The idiom ‘lose face’ is actually a translation of the Chinese expression ‘tiu lien’ meaning ‘lose face’.