mortified
UK/ˈmɔːtɪˌfaɪd/US/ˈmɔɹtəˌfaɪd/
mortified is the simple past and past participle of mortify.
Adjective
mortified (comparative more mortified, superlative most mortified)
- Acutely embarrassed.
- Having undergone mortification (discipline of the bodily appetites etc.)
Meaning of mortify
Verb
mortify (third-person singular simple present mortifies, present participle mortifying, simple past and past participle mortified)
- To discipline (one's body, appetites etc.) by suppressing desires; to practise abstinence on.
- Some people seek sainthood by mortifying the body.
- Synonyms:
- macerate
- To injure the dignity of; to embarrass; to humiliate.
- I was so mortified I could have died right there; instead I fainted, but I swore I'd never let that happen to me again.
- To kill.
- The second Spring after transplanting, purge them of all superfluous shoots and scions, reserving only the most towardly for the future stem; this to be done yearly, as long as they continue in the nursery; and if of the principal stem so left, the frost mortifie any part, cut it off [...]1664, John Evelyn, “Of the Mulberry”, in Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber; republished as Sylva: Or A Discourse of Forest Trees, volume 1, London: Arthur Doubleday...
- Synonyms:
- dispose of, terminate, annihilate, bag, baptize, bereave of life, blight, bring down, bump off, bury
- To reduce the potency of; to nullify; to deaden, neutralize.
- Soothly, the gode werkes, that he dide biforn that he fil in sinne, been al mortified and astoned and dulled by the ofte sinning.c. 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Persones Tale; republished as The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900, page 580
- Synonyms:
- abate, cancel out, diminish, weaken
- To affect with vexation or chagrin.
- He seemed to enjoy mortifying them with news of every fresh hell loosed in the capital.
- Synonyms:
- disturb, perturb, agitate, freak, sting, bother, bring down, discompose, unstring, disconcert
- To scare.
- Near-synonym: petrify
Forms of mortified
| comparative | more mortified |
|---|---|
| superlative | most mortified |
Words formed from mortified
Questions about mortified
- What does mortified mean?
- Mortified means acutely embarrassed.
- What is mortified the simple past and past participle of?
- Mortified is the simple past and past participle of mortify.
- What part of speech is mortified?
- Mortified is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce mortified?
- Mortified is pronounced /ˈmɔːtɪˌfaɪd/ (UK).
Words near mortified in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mortified (page history and authors); mortify (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “mortified.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mortified. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
