face-saving

1. 1.

   maintaining dignity or prestige

   “a face-saving compromise”

   Similarhelpful

Questions about face-saving

What does face-saving mean?

face-saving means "maintaining dignity or prestige".

How many syllables are in face-saving?

face-saving has 4 syllables and divides as fa-ce--sa-ving under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

Is face-saving a common word?

face-saving is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.