mortifying

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...

   Synonyms:

   dispose of, terminate, annihilate, bag, baptize, bereave of life, blight, bring down, bump off, bury

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

   Synonyms:

   abate, cancel out, diminish, weaken

5. (transitive) 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

6. (transitive) To scare.
   • Near-synonym: petrify

   Synonyms:

   frighten, alarm, affright, appall, dismay, fray, grill, give someone the shits, harrow, horrify

See all 12 meanings of mortify