Shameful

How to spell shameful

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shameful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shameful mean?

1. adjectiveCausing or deserving disgrace, dishonour, or strong disapproval.

Shameful in a sentence

• The company's shameful treatment of its staff made national headlines.

• It was shameful that the bridge had been left unsafe for so many years.

Where does shameful come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shameful comes from the native Old English word scamu, meaning 'shame, disgrace, or a feeling of guilt and humiliation', combined with the suffix -ful, which originally meant 'full of'. So the word literally describes something that is full of shame, or that brings disgrace. The root scamu has Germanic relatives across the family, including the modern German Scham, and it carried the same sense of public dishonour and embarrassment for well over a thousand years. The -ful ending is a common English habit for turning a noun into an adjective, as in 'hopeful' and 'careful', and it is worth noting that the suffix takes only a single l in adjectives even though the standalone word 'full' has two. The single l in shameful is the main thing writers need to remember, since the silent e of shame is kept before the suffix.

How the word is built

• sham- (root from Old English scamu: disgrace)
• -e
• -ful (full of)