embarrassment
part of speech
noun (embarrassment, embarrassments)
meaning for a pupil
1) A feeling of being shy, silly or uncomfortable because of something you did or something that happened in front of others. tree →
2) A person or thing that makes you feel this way. tree →
sense in the lessons
In lessons about feelings, embarrassment is a normal feeling, for example tripping in front of the class or forgetting lines in a play; everyone feels it, and it passes. Laughing at your own small mistakes helps. Teasing others to cause embarrassment is unkind. Phrases: «red with embarrassment», «to my embarrassment», «cause embarrassment».
examples
- My face went red with embarrassment. tree →
- To my embarrassment, I called my teacher «Mum». tree →
- She hid her embarrassment by laughing. tree →
- Don't tease people to cause them embarrassment. tree →
- Embarrassment is a feeling that soon goes away. tree →
- The burst ball was an embarrassment for the team. tree →
- By this time the princess had recovered from the first embarrassment of meeting, and proceeded to make her speech of welcome. tree →
note
Spelling trap: double «r» and double «s»: em-ba-rr-a-ss-ment. Mostly uncountable (the feeling). Verb: embarrass; adjectives: embarrassed (how you feel), embarrassing (what causes it).
In the corpora
- Grown-ups have all the same feelings children have: anger, sadness, fear, loneliness, jealousy, embarrassment and pride.
- Laughing kindly with someone who tripped is fine; laughing at them makes their embarrassment worse.
- Some parents look embarrassed when a child asks about it; embarrassment is not anger, and asking was still right.
- "Not our finest hour" is a humorous way of saying a bad failure or embarrassment.
- When someone will act on your answer, a false «it's perfect» can lead them into embarrassment later.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «embarrassment» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.