The Elders' face-saving device.

"Diplomats are good at dealing with one another so that there are face-saving devices," Mr. Baker said.

They're face-saving devices for young bowlers whose athletic reputations are on the line.

This diplomatic move is a face-saving device, even though President Bush naturally denies that it is.

The soldiers were Colombian, and the use of the League armbands was primarily a face-saving device to permit the Peruvians to leave without appearing to submit to the Colombians.

We wish that Mr. Bush had chosen a different face-saving device.

Letting The Ruler do the preliminary talking may be a face-saving device.

Presumably, it was intended as a face-saving device to reinforce his authority in a company that appears, like the society it mirrors, to be splintering.

Nobody really believed him, but it was a face-saving device and everybody went along with it.

It consolidates management, but is really a face-saving device for three people who already had the presidential title.