Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Mortifying |
MortifyingAdjective1. Causing to feel shame or chagrin or vexation; "the embarrassing moment when she found her petticoat down around her ankles"; "it was mortifying to know he had heard every word". 2. Causing awareness of your shortcomings; "golf is a humbling game". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "mortifying" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1596. (references) |
Synonyms: MortifyingSynonyms: demeaning (adj), embarrassing (adj), humbling (adj), humiliating (adj). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Pain | Irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious; troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome; plaguing, plaguy; awkward. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Mortifying |
| English words defined with "mortifying": embarrassing ♦ Mortifyingly. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "mortifying": Belly ♦ Dawn ♦ Lawyer. (references) |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Joyce, James | He chronicled with patience what he saw, detaching himself from it and testing its mortifying flavour in secret. |
Gulliver's Travels | Swift, Jonathan | They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Mortifying" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 55.56% of the time. "Mortifying" is used about 9 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 55.56% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Lexical Verb (-ing form) | 44.44% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Total | 100.00% | 9 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Language | Translations for "mortifying"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | ofendues (assaulter, insulting, offensive, opprobrious). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | kränkend (aggrieving, grieving, grievous, grievously, offending, slighting), demütigend (abasing, humbling). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | megalázó (degrading, humiliating, ignominious). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | umiliante (abasing, humbling, humiliating). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | "しい (regrettable, vexing), "やしい (regrettable, vexing), 口惜しい (regrettable, vexing). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | くやしい (regrettable, vexing), くちおしい (regrettable, vexing). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | ortifyingmay mortificante (mortifier), humilhante (humiliating), arrasador (demolisher, slashing), aflitivo (afflicted, distressing, lancinating, painful). (various references) оскорбительный (abusive, contumelious, humiliating, injurious, insolent, insulting, invidious, offensive, opprobrious, outrageous, scurrilous). (various references) mučiteljski, ponižavajući (degrading, derogatory, humiliating). (various references) mortificante (galling, mortifier), humillante (abasing, degrading, galling, humiliating, humiliating person). (various references) образливий (abusive, affronting, affrontive, contumelious, humiliating, injurious, insulting, obloquious, obscene, offending, offensive, opprobrious, ornery, outrageous, pettish, resentful, slanderous, touchy, umbrageous). (various references) l m xấu hổ (shameful), l m mất thể diện (disparaging), khổ hạnh l m nhục, h nh xác. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Misspellings | |
"Mortifying" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Morifing. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "f-g-i-i-m-n-o-r-t-y" | |
-2 letters: minority. | |
-3 letters: firming, forming, ignitor, introfy, mitring, mortify, nigrify, nitrify, rifting, rioting. | |
-4 letters: firing, forint, fringy, frying, ignify, infirm, inform, minify, miring, notify, origin, riming, timing, tiring, toying, trigon, trying, tyring, yogini. | |
-5 letters: forty, front, giron, gonif, goyim, grift, grimy, griot, groin, gyron, imino, ingot, intro, iring, irony, mingy, minor, minty, motif, nifty, nitro. | |
| Words containing the letters "f-g-i-i-m-n-o-r-t-y" | |
+5 letters: transmogrifying. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)4D 6F 72 74 69 66 79 69 6E 67 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-- --- .-. - .. ..-. -.--. .. -. --. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01001101 01101111 01110010 01110100 01101001 01100110 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)M o r t i f y i n g |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)004D 006F 0072 0074 0069 0066 0079 0069 006E 0067 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)47818486757291758073 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Quotations: Fiction | 5. Quotations: Non-fiction 6. Usage Frequency 7. Translations: Modern 8. Derivations | 9. Anagrams 10. Orthography 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
