Word.ws English Dictionary

putting to shame

putting to shame is the present participle and gerund of put to shame.

Meaning of 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
  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
    Synonyms:
    confound

Questions about putting to shame

What is putting to shame the present participle and gerund of?
Putting to shame is the present participle and gerund of put to shame.

Words near putting to shame in the dictionary

  1. putting to good account
  2. putting to good use
  3. putting to lie
  4. putting to rest
  5. putting to sea
  6. putting to shame
  7. putting to sleep
  8. putting to the blush
  9. putting to the horn
  10. putting to the sword
  11. putting to the test

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: putting to shame (page history and authors); put to shame (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: “putting to shame.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/putting_to_shame. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.