Source: Oxford English Dictionary — "save-face" and "face-saving" (reported, not directly read)
- Title: save-face, adj. & n.; face-saving, n. & adj. (OED entries)
- Publication: Oxford English Dictionary (oed.com)
- URL: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/save-face_adj ; https://www.oed.com/dictionary/face-saving_n
- Type: tertiary-via-WebSearch report of a primary lexicographic source; the OED's own page content is paywalled/login-gated
- Accessed: 2026-09-03 (via WebSearch summary of the OED's own listing; direct WebFetch of both URLs redirected to an OAuth login wall and could not retrieve content — the same standing OED-access fence recorded on this project's other word pages, e.g. sisu)
Extract
- Per WebSearch's report of the OED's own metadata: "save-face" (adjective/noun) has its earliest OED evidence dated 1900, from the Supplement to the London & China Telegraph.
- "face-saving" (noun/adjective) has its earliest OED evidence dated 1901, from the Arizona Republic.
- Neither definition text nor citation wording was retrieved — metadata (earliest-use date and citing publication) only, consistent with this project's standing practice of distinguishing "OED coverage confirmed via metadata" from "OED entry directly read" (see sisu's equivalent source,
oed-sisu-reported.md). - These OED dates (1900/1901) sit later than the 1876 (Robert Hart) and 1899 (Harmsworth Magazine) dates reported by phrasesorguk-lose-face-save-face.md, the 1874 newspaper date reported by wikipedia-face-sociological-concept.md, and the 1830s pidgin-English claim reported by asianreviewofbooks-keevak-2022-on-saving-face.md — a four-way dating disagreement recorded on the word page, not resolved.
Gaps
- Direct OED access blocked (OAuth redirect) — this record rests on a WebSearch report of the OED's own page, one step further removed than sisu's equivalent record (which came from a direct WebSearch of oed.com returning the same kind of metadata). Flagged accordingly as slightly weaker sourcing than the sisu precedent.
- The OED entries indexed appear to be for the hyphenated adjective/noun forms "save-face" and "face-saving," not the verb phrases "save face" / "lose face" themselves — whether OED separately dates the plain verb phrases is unconfirmed.