ESL Vocabulary for Embarrassment
Advanced > Health & Beauty Embarrassment
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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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To be taken down a notch
To be humbled.
“My brother is so arrogant. He needs to be taken down a notch.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”