Word.ws English Dictionary

mauvaise honte

mauvaise honte noun: shyness, especially when affected; false modesty.

Noun

mauvaise honte (uncountable)

  1. Shyness, especially when affected; false modesty.
    • In that capacity she sat with becoming easiness of mien (for she was as void of the mauvaise honte as any dutchess in the land) [and] bowed very graciously to the compliments of the gentlemen […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
    • The practice, from whatever it may arise, is very embarrassing to the mauvaise honte of an Englishman: this may easily be surmounted, when it is perceived that the first visit is always considered as a polite attention.1826, Henry Digby Beste, Four Years in France, Henry Colburn (publisher), pages 240–242, quoted in The Monthly Review, Volume III, Number XI (September 1826), page 95

Examples of mauvaise honte in a sentence

  • So much for Miss Jaques, only as far as I could judge from seeing her in a ball-room, she never evinced any extreme of mauvaise honte – What did you think, mia cara?1831 June 18, Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by John Chapple and Alan Shelston, Further Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, Manchester University Press...
  • This writer was the victim of the most crushing mauvaise honte, and could therefore describe it from experience.1848 January, Frederic Wonham, “Mauvaise Honte”, in William Shirrefs, editor, The People's Press, volume 11, number 13, page 104:

Origin of mauvaise honte

From French mauvaise honte.

Questions about mauvaise honte

What does mauvaise honte mean?
Mauvaise honte means shyness, especially when affected; false modesty.
How do you use mauvaise honte in a sentence?
So much for Miss Jaques, only as far as I could judge from seeing her in a ball-room, she never evinced any extreme of mauvaise honte – What did you think, mia cara?
What part of speech is mauvaise honte?
Mauvaise honte is a noun.

Words near mauvaise honte in the dictionary

  1. mautos
  2. Mautz
  3. Mautzes
  4. mauvais quart d'heure
  5. mauvais quarts d'heure
  6. mauvaise honte
  7. mauvaise langue
  8. mauvaniline
  9. mauve
  10. mauve box
  11. mauve boxes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mauvaise honte (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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