Embarrassing

How to spell embarrassing

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce embarrassing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does embarrassing mean?

1. adjectiveCausing a feeling of awkwardness, self-consciousness, or shame.

Embarrassing in a sentence

• Forgetting the client's name during the meeting was deeply embarrassing.

• The typo in the company-wide email was embarrassing for the whole team.

Where does embarrassing come from?

Language of origin: French

This word descends from the French embarrasser, meaning 'to block', 'to obstruct', or 'to hamper', which French had borrowed in turn from the Spanish embarazar, 'to impede or hinder'. The deep root is the Spanish word barra, meaning a bar or barrier; the original image was of something physically obstructed or clogged up, like a road blocked by an obstacle. English adopted the word in the seventeenth century, at first to mean tangling someone in difficulties or encumbering them. From the sense of being awkwardly entangled grew the modern emotional meaning of being made to feel awkward, self-conscious, or ashamed. The notorious spelling trap, the double r and the double s, comes straight from that French embarrasser, where both pairs were already doubled, and forgetting either pair is the classic adult slip.

How the word is built

• em- (in, into)
• barr- (from Spanish barra: bar, obstacle)
• -ass-
• -ing (present participle/adjective suffix)