SAVE FACE – “Avoid embarrassment or disgrace; retrieve or preserve one’s reputation at a time of a challenge to it. ‘Face’ here is figuratively the aspect that one presents to the world or one’s associates. ‘Saving face’ is said to be of great importance to Chinese, Japanese and other Oriental people, but it is equally practiced in other parts of the World. Here is ‘Chamber’s Journal’ in 1917: ‘The civilian native staff had bolted at the first sign of trouble, ‘going to report to the authorities’ being their ‘save face’ for it.'” From “The Dictionary of Cliches” by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).

To save face is to keep your pride and integrity from going out the window for some bonehead mistake