put to shame

Verb

put to shame (third-person singular simple present puts to shame, present participle putting to shame, simple past and past participle put to shame)

1. (transitive) To humiliate; to disgrace.
   • Any other man in my place would have gone to his house and shot him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to kill him by inches.1902, Mark Twain, chapter 1, in A Double Barrelled Detective Story
   • [Europe] has ever carried her own standard of perfection, by which we can measure her falls and gauge her degrees of failure, by which we can call her before her own tribunal and put her to shame,—the shame which is the sign of the true pride of nobleness.1916 July 2, Rabindranath Tagore, The Spirit of Japan: A Lecture
2. (transitive) To outdo thoroughly; to surpass; to outperform; to show up.
   • Henry put me to shame; he fought, and fought bravely. John and I had made no resistance.1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 19, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC
   • [T]he dog is said to have the most diseases second to man; the horse comes next; but the wild ones put us to shame by their superior health and the beauty that belongs to right development.1911, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, chapter 3, in Our Androcentric Culture

   Synonyms:

   confound