abash

English[edit]

Attested from 1303, as Middle English abaisen, abaishen, abashen (“lose one's composure, be upset”), from the later 14th-century also transitive "to make ashamed, to perplex or embarrass"; from Anglo-Norman abaïss, from Middle French abair, abaisser (“lose one's composure, be startled, be stunned”), from Old French esbaïr, (French ébahir), from es- (“utterly”) + baïr (“to astonish”), from Medieval Latin *exbadō, from ex- (“out of”) + bado (“I gape, yawn”), an onomatopoeic word imitating a yawn, see also French badaud (“rubbernecker”).^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]

abash (third-person singular simple present abashes, present participle abashing, simple past and past participle abashed)

(transitive) To make ashamed; to embarrass; to destroy the self-possession of, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to disconcert; to discomfit. [First attested from around (1150 to 1350).]^[1]
Synonyms: bewilder, confuse, confound, daunt, discompose, disconcert, discountenance, dishearten, embarrass, faze, fluster, humble, humiliate, mortify, rattle, shake, shame, snub

Antonyms: abet, animate, buoy, cheer, countenance, embolden, encourage, incite, inspirit, rally, reassure, uphold
- 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 14, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:
  He was a man whom no check could abash
- 1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 8, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 129:
  The stare seemed to abash Poirot.
(intransitive, obsolete) To lose self-possession; to become ashamed. [Attested from around (1350 to 1470) until the late 16^th century.]^[1]
- 1485 July 31, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter III, in William Caxton, editor, Le Morte d'Arthur‎^[1], volume 1:
  [...] as King Uther lay by his queen, he asked her, by the faith she owed to him, whose was the body; then she sore abashed to give answer.

to make ashamed, to embarrass

obsolete: to lose self-possession; to become ashamed

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 Lesley Brown, editor-in-chief, William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, editors (2002), “abash”, in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th edition, Oxford, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 2.
^ Philip Babcock Gove (editor), Webster's Third International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (G. & C. Merriam Co., 1976 [1909], →ISBN), page 2
^ Christine A. Lindberg, editor (2002), “abash”, in The Oxford College Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Spark Publishing, →ISBN, page 2.
^ “abash”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.