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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

abash.

To make ashamed; to embarrass; to destroy the self-possession of, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to disconcert; to discomfit.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/əˈbæʃ/Received-Pronunciation/əˈbæʃ/General-American
  1. To make ashamed; to embarrass; to destroy the self-possession of, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to disconcert; to discomfit.

    transitive
  2. To lose self-possession; to become ashamed.

    intransitive · obsolete
Where this word comes from

Attested from 1303, as Middle English abaisen, abaishen, abashen (“lose one's composure, be upset”), from the later 14th-century also transitive "to make ashamed, to perplex or embarrass"; from Anglo-Norman abaïss, from Middle French abair, abaisser (“lose one's composure, be startled, be stunned”), from Old French esbaïr, (French ébahir), from es- (“utterly”) + baïr (“to astonish”), from Medieval Latin *exbadō, from ex- (“out of”) + bado (“to gape, yawn”), an onomatopoeic word imitating a yawn, see also French badaud (“rubbernecker”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.