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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
embarrass
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an awkward/uncomfortable/embarrassed silence
▪ ‘Fred tells me you like books,’ Steve said, after an awkward silence.
an embarrassing incident
▪ He left after an embarrassing incident in the bar.
an embarrassing question
▪ The media began to ask embarrassing questions about MPs' expenses.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
almost
▪ I am almost embarrassed because our answers appear to be a party line.
▪ At times it was almost embarrassing for me.
▪ Had the masses become almost embarrassed by the heavily hyped prospect of a walkover and wanted to encourage the visitors?
deeply
▪ It also deeply embarrassed Mr Fox.
▪ The revelations will deeply embarrass the security services and lead to further accusations of incompetence as yet another operative tells his story.
slightly
▪ I am slightly embarrassed by this story but I fear it should be told.
▪ He caught a glimpse of a slightly embarrassed but charming smile.
▪ We exchange slightly embarrassed good evenings with them as we leave.
▪ He seemed slightly embarrassed by it all.
so
▪ I was so embarrassed by his behaviour.
▪ They were placed in shops, but people were so embarrassed about using them that curtains had to be hung around them.
▪ She was so embarrassed she said she was thinking of changing her last name.
▪ It was so embarrassing I ran out of the store and haven't dared show my head in there since.
▪ Some politicians are so embarrassed by their contributors, they try to keep them secret.
▪ Mum was so embarrassed but she can laugh about it now.
too
▪ More than is let on, because their victims are often too embarrassed to own up.
▪ They were too embarrassed for that.
▪ Hanna is too embarrassed, too proud, or perhaps simply too out of it, to query this.
▪ I would have been too embarrassed to say a word to her in his presence.
▪ I don't want to wear pads and I am too embarrassed to go to the doctor.
▪ I was too embarrassed to ask his name.
▪ He called Virginia Stillman, too embarrassed to think of doing anything else.
■ NOUN
government
▪ They'd do it deliberately to embarrass the Government.
▪ It was suggested at one meeting with the delegation that such an investigation could prove embarrassing for current government officials.
▪ His close involvement threatens to embarrass Mitterrand's government, although there is no suggestion he was involved in any wrong-doing.
▪ The Opposition was also anxious to embarrass the Government, and to trap it within its own latent inconsistencies.
▪ The crisis surrounding the tunnel threatens to embarrass the Government, which insisted it be financed entirely by the private sector.
▪ If the applications are pursued, it would embarrass the Government.
▪ The idea was to embarrass the Government.
situation
▪ The situation embarrasses us in committee.
▪ Maybe because his tight situation embarrassed him.
▪ The situation is more than embarrassing.
▪ I wonder if men tend to find such situations more embarrassing than women.
■ VERB
avoid
▪ By removing the mystique immediately, you avoid the excruciatingly embarrassing guesswork by all and sundry.
▪ Hoping to avoid delays and embarrassing publicity, in July the council started quietly pressuring Pike to disengage from the venture.
▪ Perhaps he had called them Nibs also, for convenience and to avoid embarrassing mistakes.
feel
▪ Also, if drink makes you behave too boldly, afterwards you may feel a bit embarrassed.
▪ Joe was furious and felt embarrassed that his White House intrigues should come to naught.
▪ They soon stopped feeling embarrassed about coming to admire the sculptures.
▪ Then I felt embarrassed, humiliated.
▪ How am I going to tell my friends about my faith so that I don't get ridiculed or feel embarrassed?
▪ I felt really uncomfortable and embarrassed because I felt I was sending all the wrong messages.
▪ I felt embarrassed for my clients, as if they had misbehaved.
look
▪ Grant at least had the grace to look thoroughly embarrassed.
▪ The people standing around us looked embarrassed.
▪ She very seldom looked embarrassed, but there was just a hint of embarrassment about her now.
▪ She looked embarrassed by this information.
▪ He looked embarrassed when I said it, but genuinely gratified, and then be shuffled off without a single word more.
▪ Then, perhaps feeling that his gesture was mawkish, he looked embarrassed, took the flowers out and backed away.
▪ I looked down, embarrassed by the shamefulness of her situation and astonished by the surprises that fate kept setting before me.
▪ A moment later, all that I could see was that the chil-dren looked embarrassed.
prove
▪ Just be careful it does enter the right address-otherwise it could prove embarrassing.
▪ It was suggested at one meeting with the delegation that such an investigation could prove embarrassing for current government officials.
▪ Prominent anti-abortion activists in the party had opposed the resolution, because it might prove embarrassing.
▪ At times, the gap proved embarrassing.
▪ Even the pretrial depositions could prove embarrassing and politically damaging if, as is likely, they were released to the public.
seem
▪ Even some timber industry people seemed embarrassed, in some cases leaving trees uncut along streams.
▪ She seemed a little embarrassed, but pleased that I recognized her name.
▪ Once again, they don't seem a bit embarrassed.
▪ He seemed slightly embarrassed by it all.
▪ When she looked at me again, she had tears in her eyes and she seemed embarrassed by that.
want
▪ I wouldn't want to embarrass you, but I really can see no alternative at present.
▪ The election was only three months away and Fulbright did not want to embarrass Johnson.
▪ He didn't want to embarrass the poor woman.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
color me surprised/confused/embarrassed etc
financially embarrassed
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ I hope I didn't embarrass you in front of your friends.
▪ I hope my little dance didn't embarrass you.
▪ One woman was trying to embarrass me by asking me questions I couldn't answer.
▪ The release of these secret documents has embarrassed the administration.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But the Government has been severely embarrassed by the burgeoning cost of the programme.
▪ I was embarrassed for a moment by my immodesty.
▪ It will only embarrass the Church.
▪ They'd do it deliberately to embarrass the Government.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Embarrass

Embarrass \Em*bar"rass\ ([e^]m*b[a^]r"ras), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Embarrassed ([e^]m*b[a^]r"rast); p. pr. & vb. n. Embarrassing.] [F. embarrasser (cf. Sp. embarazar, Pg. embara[,c]ar, Pr. barras bar); pref. em- (L. in) + LL. barra bar. See Bar.]

  1. To hinder from freedom of thought, speech, or action by something which impedes or confuses mental action; to make (a person) unpleasantly self-conscious; to perplex; to discompose; to disconcert; as, laughter may embarrass an orator. [WordNet sense 1]

    Syn: abash, discompose, disconcert, discomfit, chagrin. [1913 Webster +PJC]

  2. To hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct; as, business is embarrassed; public affairs are embarrassed. [WordNet sense 2]

    Syn: obstruct, blockade, block, hinder, stymie. [1913 Webster]

  3. (Com.) To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to incumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands; -- said of a person or his affairs; as, a man or his business is embarrassed when he can not meet his pecuniary engagements.

    Syn: To hinder; perplex; entangle; confuse; puzzle; disconcert; abash; distress. -- To Embarrass, Puzzle, Perplex. We are puzzled when our faculties are confused by something we do not understand. We are perplexed when our feelings, as well as judgment, are so affected that we know not how to decide or act. We are embarrassed when there is some bar or hindrance upon us which impedes our powers of thought, speech, or motion. A schoolboy is puzzled by a difficult sum; a reasoner is perplexed by the subtleties of his opponent; a youth is sometimes so embarrassed before strangers as to lose his presence of mind.

Embarrass

Embarrass \Em*bar"rass\, n. [F. embarras. See Embarrass, v. t.] Embarrassment. [Obs.]
--Bp. Warburton.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
embarrass

1670s, "perplex, throw into doubt," from French embarrasser (16c.), literally "to block," from Italian imbarrazzo, from imbarrare "to bar," from assimilated form of in- "into, upon" (see in- (2)) + Vulgar Latin *barra "bar" (see bar (n.1)).\n

\nMeaning "to hamper, hinder" is from 1680s. Meaning "make (someone) feel awkward" first recorded 1828. Original sense preserved in embarras de richesse (1751), from French (1726): the condition of having more wealth than one knows what to do with. Related: Embarrassed; embarrassing; embarrassingly.

Wiktionary
embarrass

vb. 1 (context transitive English) to humiliate; to disrupt somebody's composure or comfort with acting publicly or freely; to disconcert; to abash 2 (context transitive English) To hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct. 3 (context transitive English) To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to encumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands.

WordNet
embarrass
  1. v. cause to be embarrassed; cause to feel self-conscious [syn: abash]

  2. hinder or prevent the progress or accomplishment of; "His brother blocked him at every turn" [syn: obstruct, blockade, block, hinder, stymie, stymy]

Gazetteer
Embarrass, WI -- U.S. village in Wisconsin
Population (2000): 399
Housing Units (2000): 164
Land area (2000): 1.203737 sq. miles (3.117664 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.003955 sq. miles (0.010243 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 1.207692 sq. miles (3.127907 sq. km)
FIPS code: 23850
Located within: Wisconsin (WI), FIPS 55
Location: 44.670716 N, 88.703361 W
ZIP Codes (1990):
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Embarrass, WI
Embarrass
Wikipedia
Embarrass

Embarrass may refer to:

Usage examples of "embarrass".

Kosmos into a flatland interlocking order of holistic elements, with the embarrassed subject dangling over the flatland holistic world with absolutely no idea how it got there.

Perhaps if he embarrassed himself badly enough, it would at least slow the Adjutors down in their rush to total power.

Embarrassed, entangled, involved, he flew to Lady Afy, half in pique and half in misery.

How embarrassing would that be, he thought in panic, if Alameda had heard him moaning her name while he was in the lower rack mere inches from her fold-down desk while she pulled an allnighter on her engineering paperwork?

Even raunchy jokes embarrassed him, never mind sleazy amourettes in hotels.

The Dowager, with a magnificent disregard for the coachman and the footman, perched on the box-seat in front of her, knew no such reticence, and discoursed with great freedom on the birth of an heir to the barony, animadverting with embarrassing candour, and all the contempt of a matriarch who had brought half-a-dozen children into the world without fuss or complications, on sickly young women who fancied themselves to be ill days before their time, and ended by suffering cross births and hard labours.

Her aquamarine eyes were troubled and embarrassed, for she hated to turn down an offer that she would have loved to accept.

It had not cured them, but an altogether embarrassing number of those darkies had gone blind, stone blind, from Atoxyl before they had had time to die from sleeping sickness.

The name Code Master was an embarrassing sobriquet Babby had announced to one and all after his success at breaking the French code during the war.

He was embarrassed to use the name Bindle and Marmelstein had given the terrorist.

There was a sudden release, a very loud, recognizably embarrassing noise, and a burst of speed that shot the Blimp forward at twice its normal speed.

Every one present had pretended to read the missive, but Boke knew that some of the big shots could not read a word, and he did not want to embarrass anybody.

All, however, wore the same nervous, silly smile, all swayed themselves with embarrassed timidity, the anxious mien of the bondswoman at the slave market, who fears that she may not find a purchaser.

It was my way of minimizing the painful lump in my throat, staving off the embarrassing boohoos I thought were best left unexpressed.

They would then turn to Ottawa and demand subsidies to cover fiscal overruns, either bribing ininisters to ensure bailouts or threatening to embarrass the government by halting construction-or both.