embarrassment

Noun

embarrassment (countable and uncountable, plural embarrassments)

1. A state of discomfort arising from bashfulness or consciousness of having violated a social rule; humiliation.
   • The desired effect [of affectionate teasing] is a look of pleasurable embarrassment, as if you administered a compliment. Anyone who doesn't stop teasing immediately upon producing real embarrassment, anger or tears is not really teasing.1998 February 22, Judith Martin, “Tease and sympathy”, in The Washington Post
2. A person or thing which is the cause of humiliation to another.
   • Jack, you are an embarrassment to this family.
   • Losing this highly publicized case was an embarrassment to the firm.
3. A large collection of good or valuable things, especially one that exceeds requirements or causes some sort of hindrance.
   • There are over 5,000 Americans now in Paris, many artists, singers, musicians, writers, and actors, so many, indeed, the committee could hardly pick a program from an embarrassment of volunteers.1914, Collier's, page 30
   • The landscape presented an embarrassment of riches for the industrial archaeologist, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century remains were still visible in abundance1996, David Morgan Evans, Peter Salway, David Thackray, The Remains of Distant Times: Archaeology and the National Trust, Boydell & Brewer, →ISBN, page 188
4. A state of confusion; hesitation; uncertainty.
   • […]and render them more intelligible than all the commentaries which have been written on them, for they generally render the authour more obscure, and lead the reader into greater embarrassments, by what they explain, than by what they leave untouched.1785, James Ridgway, A Dictionary of Literary Conversation
5. Impairment of function due to disease: respiratory embarrassment.
6. (dated) Difficulty in financial matters; poverty.
7. (collective) A group of pandas (ie. red panda, giant panda)
   • In Wolong, the captive panda population has increased from just eight bears to 330-the largest embarrassment of pandas in the world.2023, Gloria Dickie, Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future, W. W. Norton
   • A string of somebody’s little ponies, an embarrassment of pandas, enough dayglow neon to blow out an eardrum and a round of heavy, wet snow contributed Sunday to a rousing first round of closing days for Aspen mountains.2018 April 18, David Krause, “Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk end season with parties, bacon. Lots of bacon”, in The Aspen Times, archived from the original on 27 Jul 2026