What is another word for embarrassments?

Pronunciation: [ɛmbˈaɹəsmənts] (IPA)

Embarrassments are situations that can be uncomfortable or awkward. Synonyms for this word can include shame, humiliation, mortification, or discomfiture. These words suggest feelings of embarrassment that come from being exposed to a situation beyond one's control. Other synonyms for embarrassment include confusion, vexation, awkwardness, abashment, and self-consciousness. Regardless of the specific word used, the underlying meaning behind all these synonyms is the same: an uncomfortable feeling resulting from an action, situation or words that makes one feel exposed or foolish. Knowing these words can help in accurately describing situations and emotions, and seeking to avoid future embarrassments.

What are the hypernyms for Embarrassments?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

Usage examples for Embarrassments

William politely escorted her downstairs, and somehow, amongst her protests and embarrassments, Mrs. Milvain forgot to say good-bye to Katharine.
"Night and Day"
Virginia Woolf
It may be safely said that few indeed are those fortunate individuals who find themselves clear of similar embarrassments.
"Hodge and His Masters"
Richard Jefferies
While himself labouring under many difficulties, arising from the war, he extended his helping hand to his old friend the general, struggling from the same cause under still greater embarrassments, and had the satisfaction to assist in extricating him from many of them.
"A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion"
William Dobein James

Famous quotes with Embarrassments

  • A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
    Jorge Luis Borges
  • We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity.
    Felix Adler
  • Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy-- into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based-- of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.
    Theodor Mommsen
  • Ideally, a book of letters should be published posthumously. The advantages are obvious: the editor enjoys a free hand, and the author enjoys a perfect hiding place — the grave, where he is impervious to embarrassments and beyond the reach of libel. I have failed to cooperate with this ideal arrangement. Through some typical bit of mismanagement, I am still alive, and the book has had to adjust to that awkward fact.
    E. B. White
  • Prayer is the act by which man, detaching himself from the embarrassments of sense and nature, ascends to the true level of his destiny.
    Henry Liddon

Related words: embarrassing moments, embarrassing things, embarrassing in public, embarrassing situations

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