Shameless
adjectiveShowing no shame, guilt, or embarrassment about behaviour that would normally cause it.
How to spell shameless
9 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce shameless
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does shameless mean?
- adjectiveShowing no shame, guilt, or embarrassment about behaviour that would normally cause it.
Shameless in a sentence
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His shameless self-promotion at the meeting embarrassed the whole team.
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The company made a shameless attempt to overcharge loyal customers.
Where does shameless come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This word is a native English formation built from two Old English parts. The root is sceamu, meaning a feeling of disgrace, guilt, or embarrassment, which gave us the modern noun 'shame'. To this was added the suffix -leas, the ancestor of modern -less, which literally meant 'free from' or 'without'; the same suffix sits in 'fearless', 'careless', and 'hopeless'. The compound sceamleas existed already in Old English to describe a person who felt no shame, and it has carried that sense unchanged for over a thousand years. The only real spelling trap is the silent final 'e' of shame surviving inside the word: writers must keep 'shame' whole and simply add 'less', never collapsing it to 'shamless'.
How the word is built
- shame (from Old English sceamu: disgrace, embarrassment)
- -less (without)
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