English Words and Phrases for Embarrassment

To be mortified

To be extremely embarrassed and upset about a situation that has occurred.

“I was mortified when my pants fell down in front of the entire school.”

________________________________________________

To make you cringe

A situation that embarrasses you or upsets you so much that your body tightens up.

“It made me cringe to see my daughter being so rude to the old lady on the bus.”

To be shamed by somebody

To be made to feel guilty by another person.

“His mother shamed him into cleaning his room.”

________________________________________________

To lose face

To lose the respect of others because of a situation.

“You are going to lose face if you let the kids see you getting yelled at by your boss.”

________________________________________________

To be put in your place

When a person lets you know that you are not as great as you think you are you are put in your place.

“John was bragging about what a great dancer he is when Jane reminded him of how he fell in front of the audience. I guess you could say that Jane put him in his place.”

________________________________________________

To be taken down a notch

To be humbled.

“My brother is so arrogant. He needs to be taken down a notch.”

________________________________________________

To get dissed

A slang term for getting disrespected by another person

“I got dissed by that girl from Biology class that I asked out. She told me she is not into my type.”

________________________________________________

To not show your face

To stay away from a certain group of people because of an embarrassing situation that occurred

“Sara won’t be showing her face around here for a while. We caught her trying to steal a CD from John’s backpack.”

________________________________________________

Sheepish grin

To smile in a way that shows you are embarrassed.

“My son looked at me with a sheepish grin when I caught him taking his sister’s cookie.”

________________________________________________

The elephant in the room

A way to express an embarrassing situation that everyone knows abut, but nobody wants to acknowlege

“We all knew that Robert had been arrested last night, but nobody wanted to talk about it. It was the elephant in the room.”

________________________________________________

To be a black eye for

To be an embarrassing situation for a person or an institution

“John’s fight with the customer has been a black eye for our business for some time now.”

To sweep under the rug

To try to hide an embarrassing situation so nobody will find out

“The movie star’s agent tried to sweep that one under the rug, but the press found out. It is hard to hide the fact that you got arrested for public intoxication.”