abash
verbUK /əˈbæʃ/ · US /əˈbæʃ/
Etymology Attested from 1303, as Middle English abaisen, abaishen, abashen (“lose one's composure, be upset”), from the later 14th-century also transitive "to make ashamed, to perplex or embarrass"; from Anglo-Norman abaïss, from Middle French abair, abaisser (“lose one's composure, be startled, be stunned”), from Old French esbaïr, (French ébahir), from es- (“utterly”) + baïr (“to astonish”), from Medieval Latin *exbadō, from ex- (“out of”) + bado (“to gape, yawn”), an onomatopoeic word imitating a yawn, see also French badaud (“rubbernecker”).
To make ashamed; to embarrass; to destroy the self-possession of, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to disconcert; to discomfit.
- He was a man whom no check could abash1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XIV, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:
- The stare seemed to abash Poirot.1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 8, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 129:
Obsolete To lose self-possession; to become ashamed.
- [...] as King Uther lay by his queen, he asked her, by the faith she owed to him, whose was the body; then she sore abashed to give answer.1485 July 31, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter III, in William Caxton, editor, Le Morte d'Arthur, volume 1:
- Synonyms
- abase, abash, bring low, confuse, confound, debase, degrade, demean, depress, disconcert, discomfit, dishonour, embarrass, humble, humiliate, lower, mortify, put to shame, shame
- Derived terms
- abashable, abashed, abashedly, abashedness, abashing, abashless, abashment, bashful, unabashed
- Related terms
- embarrassed
- Hyponyms
- ether, put someone in his place, schlong, soften someone's cough, make a fool of oneself, make a spectacle of oneself, make an exhibition of oneself, put one's foot in it, put one's foot in one's mouth