Word.ws English Dictionary

red in the face

red in the face adjective: embarrassed.

Adjective

red in the face (comparative more red in the face, superlative most red in the face)

  1. embarrassed
  2. excited, outraged
    • On air on Tuesday, [Tucker] Carlson claimed Democrats had shown “hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger” over his use of the January 6 footage. It was “not outrage”, he said, but “fear. It’s panic.”2023 March 8, Martin Pengelly, “Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footage”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Forms of red in the face

comparativemore red in the face
superlativemost red in the face

Origin of red in the face

A reference to one's face flushing from embarrassment.

Words that rhyme with red in the face

45 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about red in the face

What does red in the face mean?
Red in the face means embarrassed.
What part of speech is red in the face?
Red in the face is an adjective.

Words near red in the face in the dictionary

  1. red huckleberries
  2. red huckleberry
  3. red hydrogen
  4. red imported fire ant
  5. red imported fire ants
  6. red in the face
  7. red in tooth and claw
  8. Red Indian
  9. Red Indians
  10. red ink
  11. red ironwood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: red in the face (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-red in the face.ogg.

Cite this entry: “red in the face.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/red_in_the_face. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.