Word.ws English Dictionary

15 minutes of shame

15 minutes of shame noun: a very short time in a negative spotlight of shame in individuals who have been subjected to public criticism and humiliation.

Noun

15 minutes of shame pl (plural only)

  1. (humorous, plural, plural-only, uncommon) A very short time in a negative spotlight of shame in individuals who have been subjected to public criticism and humiliation.
    • It's all how you handle your 15 minutes of fame or your 15 minutes of shame. If you do enough good deeds, then eventually people will forget the fool you made of yourself or the mistakes you made in the past.2016, Tony A. Gaskins, Jr., The Dream Chaser, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 214

Origin of 15 minutes of shame

By analogy with 15 minutes of fame, chosen for the rhyme.

Questions about 15 minutes of shame

What does 15 minutes of shame mean?
15 minutes of shame means a very short time in a negative spotlight of shame in individuals who have been subjected to public criticism and humiliation.
What part of speech is 15 minutes of shame?
15 minutes of shame is a noun.

Words near 15 minutes of shame in the dictionary

  1. 14th
  2. 14ᵗʰ
  3. 15 megabytes of fame
  4. 15 minutes
  5. 15 minutes of fame
  6. 15 minutes of shame
  7. 15 puzzle
  8. 15 puzzles
  9. 15-crown-5
  10. 15-gon
  11. 15-gons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 15 minutes of shame (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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