Disgrace

How to spell disgrace

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce disgrace

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disgrace mean?

1. nounA state of shame or loss of respect, or something that causes such shame.
2. verbTo bring shame or loss of respect upon someone or something.

Disgrace in a sentence

• noun

  The fraud brought lasting disgrace on the family firm.

• verb

  The cheating scandal threatened to disgrace the entire team.

• noun

  Living in poverty is no disgrace when work is scarce.

• verb

  He refused to disgrace his profession by accepting the bribe.

Where does disgrace come from?

Language of origin: French

This word arrived in English in the sixteenth century from the French disgrace, which the French had borrowed from the Italian disgrazia, meaning 'misfortune' or 'loss of favour'. At its core sits the Latin gratia, meaning 'favour', 'pleasing quality', or 'goodwill', the same root that gives us 'grace', 'gracious', and 'gratitude'. The prefix dis- carries the sense of removal or reversal, so disgrace literally describes the stripping away of favour, the opposite of being in someone's good books. Originally it leaned toward the idea of falling out of a powerful person's favour, as a courtier might be cast out by a monarch, before broadening to the modern sense of public shame and dishonour. Remembering that the second half is simply the familiar word 'grace' helps fix the spelling, since the trap is the unstressed dis- at the front, which can sound like 'dus'.

How the word is built

• dis- (away, reversal of)
• grace (favour, good standing, from Latin gratia)