Word.ws English Dictionary

mortified

UK/ˈmɔːtɪˌfaɪd/US/ˈmɔɹtəˌfaɪd/

mortified is the simple past and past participle of mortify.

Adjective

mortified (comparative more mortified, superlative most mortified)

  1. (informal) Acutely embarrassed.
  2. 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)

  1. (transitive) To discipline (one's body, appetites etc.) by suppressing desires; to practise abstinence on.
    • Some people seek sainthood by mortifying the body.
    Synonyms:
    macerate
  2. (transitive, usually) 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.
    Synonyms:
    demean, humiliate, shame
    Antonyms:
    dignify, honor
  3. (obsolete, transitive) 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...
  4. (obsolete, transitive) 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
  5. (transitive) To affect with vexation or chagrin.
    • He seemed to enjoy mortifying them with news of every fresh hell loosed in the capital.
  6. (transitive) To scare.
    • Near-synonym: petrify

See all 12 meanings of mortify

Forms of mortified

comparativemore mortified
superlativemost 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

  1. mortificates
  2. mortificating
  3. mortification
  4. mortification root
  5. mortifications
  6. mortified
  7. mortifiedly
  8. mortifiedness
  9. mortifier
  10. mortifiers
  11. mortifies

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.

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Cite this entry: “mortified.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mortified. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.