Talk:give face

Quotation

I am not sure which meaning of "give face" this sentence uses: J. Darroll Hall, The Lollipop Book, page 107: Boys gave face, girls gave head. - -sche (discuss) 02:07, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't have the sense of give face or face that would be involved. I'm sure that the other side of "giving" face is "getting" face, so "face" should have its own meaning. Whether is is more or less than "cunnilingus" or a synonym, however, I don't know. DCDuring TALK 03:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I wasn't sure if it was a (missing) sexual sense, or an existing sense, given that it could also make sense as "boys were combative"—(our sense 2)—"and girls were sexual". - -sche (discuss) 04:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Alright, here are two more quotations, making three. Should we add a sense-line? We do have [[give head]]. - -sche (discuss) 04:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

1. • 2004, Henry Joseph Rychlicki, Fragments of My Life: A Sex Fiction, page 121:

     I'd hold her ass while I was giving her face, licking and sucking while she tried to escape, anticipating her orgasm when all of the sudden she would burst sweet honey and come all over my face while the earth shook.

   • 2001, Letters to Penthouse XIV, page 107:

     Frank had pushed her pants down to reveal her pink pussy and was giving her face. She was in ecstasy.

"get face" is uncommon at Books (one cite), hard to find at Groups (I gave up.), so give face seems like the right home for this, though it implies less flexibility is usage than seems likely to me. DCDuring TALK 12:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

RFV

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Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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Rfv-sense: "To honor; to pay respect." Related to save face. In use? Context? DCDuring TALK 18:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused by the request, since a skim-through of google books:"give face" shows many more uses in this sense than in the other. The context seems to be "when talking about Chinese people and culture" (because everyone knows that we Americans love it when people embarrass us?). —Ruakh_TALK 02:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I stumbled across the entry because I stumbled across the Ety 2 sense (which I also had never heard of, while trying to cite downtalk, as best I can remember. I'd never heard give face in the Ety 1 sense and it seemed fanciful, though plausible. It wasn't in OneLook or my Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. I RfV things like that in case I forget to come back to them (as I did). In my wanderings through English entries I find many more problems than I can solve, which is why I keep on hoping that we can get more English-language contributors.

If there isn't a context suitable for {{context}}, then any quotes illustrating typical usage would be great.

I think there is also a collocation/idiom "to give (a) face to" meaning something like personify, embody, or represent. Did you come across anything like that? DCDuring TALK 14:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. (I thought there might have been something more specific that you were doubting, but I couldn't figure out what. Hence my confusion.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:17, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I have looked at quite a few bgc pages and wonder whether give face, save face, and lose face haven't become NISoP. The Chinese concept of "face" itself seems to have been substantially absorbed into English. That might have been underlying my RfV. This development seems to me to have occurred mostly in the last 20 years, possibly less. DCDuring TALK 01:12, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

If it has become NISOP, but wasn't originally, it would seem to pass the in a jiffy test. - -sche (discuss) 16:22, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Cited. Should pass as attested, and per the in a jiffy test. - -sche (discuss) 02:11, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

So passed. - -sche (discuss) 07:38, 14 August 2011 (UTC)