Word.ws English Dictionary

cover-shame

cover-shame noun: something used to conceal infamy.

Noun

cover-shame (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) Something used to conceal infamy.
    • Give place then exprobrating fruit, and come / Thou Cover-shame, old Fig-tree, in the Room: / Though men of all the fruit, that hangs o'th' tree, / Should love none less for your obscurity1659, Edmund Gayton, chapter 31, in The Art of Longevity
    • O impudence! O rogue! O villain! Nay, if he be such a man, my righteous spirit rises at him! Does he put on holy garments, for a cover-shame of lewdness?1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Friar, act 3, scene 2; republished in The Works of John Dryden, volume 6, Edinburgh: Archibold Constable and Co., 1821, page 428
  2. A plant, savin (Juniperus sabina), which was historically used as both a contraceptive and to induce abortions.

Origin of cover-shame

* cover + shame

Questions about cover-shame

What does cover-shame mean?
Cover-shame means something used to conceal infamy.
What part of speech is cover-shame?
Cover-shame is a noun.

Words near cover-shame in the dictionary

  1. cover'd
  2. cover-few
  3. cover-fews
  4. cover-girl
  5. cover-girls
  6. cover-shame
  7. cover-shames
  8. cover-slut
  9. cover-sluts
  10. cover-the-buckle
  11. cover-the-buckles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cover-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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