1 [U] the feelings of guilt, sadness and embarrassment that you have when you know that sth you have done is wrong or stupid:
His face burned with shame. * She hung her head in shame. * He could not live with the shame of other people knowing the truth. * I would die of shame if she ever found out. * To my shame (= I feel shame that) I refused to listen to her side of the story.
2 [U] (formal) (only used in questions and negative sentences) the ability to feel shame at sth you have done:
Have you no shame? * That child is completely without shame!
3 (a shame) [sing.] used to say that sth is a cause for feeling sad or disappointed:
What a shame they couldn't come. * It's a shame about Tim, isn't it? * It's a shame that she wasn't here to see it. * It would be a crying shame (= a great shame) not to take them up on the offer. * It seems such a shame to throw perfectly good food away. * It's a shame (that) you didn't say something sooner.
4 [U] the loss of respect that is caused when you do sth wrong or stupid:
There is no shame in wanting to be successful. * (formal) She felt that her failure would bring shame on her family.
IDIOMS
put sb/sth to shame to be much better than sb/sth:
Their presentation put ours to shame. * Her energy and enthusiasm puts the rest of us to shame (= makes us feel embarrassed and guilty that we are not the same).
shame on you, him, etc. (spoken) used to say that sb should feel ashamed for sth they have said or done
verb [VN]
1 (written) to make sb feel ashamed:
His generosity shamed them all.
2 (formal) to make sb feel that they have lost honour or respect:
You have shamed your family.
PHRASALVERBS
shame sb into doing sth to persuade sb to do sth by making them feel ashamed not to do it:
She shamed her father into promising more help.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for shame is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is shame a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, shame is tagged as noun.
Does shame appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — shame appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
