Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use embarrass in a sentence

18 example sentences · verb

Embarrass means to disrupt someone's composure or comfort with acting publicly or freely. Example: “The crowd's laughter and jeers embarrassed him.”

Examples of embarrass by meaning

verbTo disrupt someone's composure or comfort with acting publicly or freely.

  • The crowd's laughter and jeers embarrassed him.

verbTo hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct.

  • The motion was advanced in order to embarrass the progress of the bill.
  • The claim is vexatious in that the Defendant, if identifiable, is left both embarrassed and unable to defend itself.2004 October 15, Judith A. Snider, “kisikawpemootewin v. Canada, 2004 FC 1426”, in CanLII, retrieved 07 Nov 2020

verbTo involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to encumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands.

  • A man or his business is embarrassed when he cannot meet his pecuniary engagements.

More sentences with embarrass

  • Middle-aged men who embarrass their children with flamboyant dance moves now have the perfect excuse – evolution.2009 December 15, Matthew Moore, “‘Dad dancing’ may be the result of evolution, scientists claim”, in The Daily Telegraph, London. From the entry dad dancing
  • If the strippers learn that there is a bachelor party, they will often call the groom onstage and publicly embarrass him.2003, James Oliver Cury, The Playboy Guide to Bachelor Parties: Everything You Need to Know About Planning the Groom's Rite of…. From the entry wedgie
  • Children embarrass us because they point ever too cleverly and clearly to our denial of personal, material, and maternal history.1998, Michael Rectenwald, “Reading around the Kids”, in Constance Coiner, Diana Hume George, The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties…. From the entry pedophobia
  • They write with eloquence against the men, using the men’s own language to embarrass them and sometimes even to rout them.1977, Larry Mitchell, “It Takes All Kinds to Make the Revolutions”, in The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry rout
  • When you're pushing someone into a lake, nothing embarrasses you more than having the front seats filled up with goggling spectators.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter 15, in Jeeves in the Offing, Harmondsworth, Middlesex [London]: Penguin Books, published…. From the entry crisp
  • There was nothing of disorganization, nothing of procrastination, nothing evincive of a temper to embarrass or obstruct the public business.1923, Daniel Webster, The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster. From the entry evincive
  • These, and the frequent "runrounds" which come into the river again, would embarrass an inexperienced voyager not a little.1906, Henry David Thoreau, The Maine woods, page 56. From the entry runround
  • Certain business titans have made Mar-A-Lago a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing, and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval Pope.2025 January 12, David Remnick, “The Inauguration of Trump's Oligarchy”, in The New Yorker. From the entry genuflection
  • “It really reinforced this anger in New Delhi that Canada simply doesn’t care about these concerns, and it’s willing to embarrass India.”2024 November 29, Lex Harvey, “Clashes erupted outside a Hindu temple near Toronto. They’re the latest sign of Canada and India’s…. From the entry New Delhi
  • Her father's sad passing makes such memories deeply poignant, but Meadows relays them too chirpily for me to embarrass myself by getting moist-eyed.2010 July 16, Brian Viner, “Jenny Meadows: ‘I am happy for Semenya but not all the girls agree’”, in The Independent. From the entry chirpily
  • The president and her advisers seem convinced that by keeping the issue of the Falklands in the public eye she can embarrass London into eventual negotiations.2013 January 3, Luke Harding, Uki Goni, “Argentina urges UK to hand back Falklands and 'end colonialism'”, in The Guardian, UK. From the entry public eye
  • That Joan is not such an antisugar fascist that she'd embarrass Haley in front of the Highlands and refuse to allow their delicious desserts into the house.2008, Liz Ruckdeschel, Sara James, What If . . . Your Past Came Back to Haunt You, page 19. From the entry antisugar
  • He went so far as to change substantive policy decisions after they had been leaked to the press in order to undermine the leaker and embarrass the leakee.2005, Andrew Rudalevige, The new imperial presidency, page 104. From the entry leakee
  • Humor is intended in the scenes where men make love to "her", and where "she" conducts herself in such an un-auntly way as to embarrass any respectable young man.1952, Emil L. Telfel, A Day on the Copydesk: A Manual of Copyreading Exercises, New York, N.Y.: Rinehart & Company, page 161. From the entry un-auntly

Meaning of embarrass

  1. verb To disrupt someone's composure or comfort with acting publicly or freely.
  2. verb To hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct.
  3. verb To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to encumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands.

Full definition of embarrass

Questions about embarrass in a sentence

How do you use embarrass in a sentence?
Embarrass is used as a verb. For example: “The crowd's laughter and jeers embarrassed him.”
What is a short sentence with embarrass?
“The crowd's laughter and jeers embarrassed him.”
What does embarrass mean?
Embarrass means to disrupt someone's composure or comfort with acting publicly or freely.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: embarrass (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use embarrass in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/embarrass. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.