Source: Wiktionary — "lose face"

Extract

Wiktionary states explicitly that "lose face" is a calque (loan translation) of Chinese, citing both 丟臉/丢脸 (diūliǎn) and 丟面子/丢面子 (diū miànzi) — both literally "lose face" — as the source phrases.
Definition: an idiomatic intransitive verb, "to lose the respect of others; to be humiliated or experience public disgrace."
A quotation is dated March 1942 (Railway Magazine) — flagged in Gaps below as likely not the entry's earliest citation.
Related-terms links given: "save face," "give face," "egg on one's face," "loss of face."

This project's WebFetch-mediated read of this page returned only one 1942 quotation and could not confirm whether earlier citations exist on the live page — this conflicts with other sources on file (see wikipedia-face-sociological-concept.md, citing an 1874 American newspaper "Chinese Proverbs" column, and phrasesorguk-lose-face-save-face.md, citing an 1876 Robert Hart essay) that are decades earlier. Recorded as an unresolved disagreement on the word page rather than resolved in either direction — this project's standing practice (compare sisu's 1926/1940 dating disagreement). A future session with a cleaner direct read of the full Wiktionary citations list could resolve which is Wiktionary's actual earliest-dated citation.
Confirms the calque mechanism (a Chinese phrase translated word-for-word into English) but does not itself give a date for the calque's first formation in pidgin English (see asianreviewofbooks-keevak-2022-on-saving-face.md for the 1830s pidgin-English claim).