Embarrassment

How to spell embarrassment

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce embarrassment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does embarrassment mean?

1. nounA feeling of self-conscious awkwardness or shame, or a situation that causes it.

Embarrassment in a sentence

• To spare him further embarrassment, she changed the subject quickly.

• The accounting error caused real embarrassment for the whole department.

Where does embarrassment come from?

Language of origin: French

This word arrived in English in the late 1600s from the French verb embarrasser, meaning 'to block, hamper, or obstruct', which French itself had taken from the Spanish embarazar and the Italian imbarazzare. The deeper root is the Portuguese embaraçar, built on baraço, a word for a cord or halter; the original literal image was of being tangled up or roped in, unable to move freely. From that physical sense of being impeded, the meaning drifted toward being mentally hampered or perplexed, and finally to the modern feeling of awkward self-conscious shame. The double r and double s that trip people up come straight from the French embarrasser, where both consonants were genuinely doubled. A useful memory hook is that being embarrassed leaves you doubly red and doubly stuck, so the word carries a double r and a double s.

How the word is built

• em- (to put into)
• -barrass- (from French embarrasser: to hamper, block)
• -ment (noun suffix: state or result)