embarrassed

1. 1
   adjective

   Having a feeling of shameful discomfort, as when caught in a mistake or made the focus of unwanted attention.

   He grew visibly embarrassed when his phone blared during the funeral service.

   Too embarrassed to admit she was lost, she circled the parking garage twice.

   Similarashamed, humiliated, mortified, sheepish, self-conscious

   Oppositeproud, honored

   Note

   A participle that became a full adjective. It now grades the way adjectives do, taking more and most and accepting a softener like slightly. Its opposites, proud and honored, show what it measures: they describe a person raised in others' eyes, and embarrassed describes one brought down in them.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of embarrass.

   The leaked memo embarrassed the company in front of its investors.

   She was embarrassed by the reporter's pointed questions at the press conference.

   Note

   One spelling serves the simple past, the perfect with have, and the passive. After be, the passive can be hard to tell from the feeling adjective. If the sentence names what caused it, it is usually the verb; if it describes a state, it is usually the adjective. The verb's older meanings, to hinder and to burden with debt, survive in this form too and lie behind the archaic "impeded" sense.

3. 3
   adjectivearchaic

   Impeded or obstructed, or placed in an awkward, entangled situation, as of movement, plans, or finances.

   The merchant's embarrassed finances forced him to sell the shop and its stock.

   The column's retreat was embarrassed by narrow passes and a week of cold rain.

   Note

   Here the trouble lies outside the person, not inside. Henry James, in What Maisie Knew (1897), writes of white cliffs that signalled safety to "the embarrassed English," meaning hard-pressed, not abashed. The sense is archaic, and a modern reader will hear shame first. Use it only where the setting is plainly historical or the context makes the obstruction unmistakable, as with a hampered retreat or a tangle of debts.

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