save face/lose face

We have here two expressions that are actually antonyms. But they're very easy to understand. So suppose you made a very bad mistake. For example, you were working on a project for school and then you came up with a misinformation that led to a lot of problems for the institution. You should be able to accept your failure and at least apologize for what you've done, but instead you'd rather act in a defensive way and not lose face. But wait, what does that mean?

When you lose face, you lose reputation, status, become less respectable. So imagine one friend of yours comes up to you to ask you what you're going to do to try to get people to respect you again. And then you think about it. That's when the idea pops up in your head: You're going to put the blame on others that contributed with you on the project just to keep your reputation. It's far from a fair thing to do, but you're taking any risk to save face. Again: save face.

As you may imagine, when you try to save face, you do the opposite of losing face. You do everything possible to preserve dignity and avoid humiliation and embarrassment. That's all for today. Talk to you next time!