Synonyms

mortified

American

[mawr-tuh-fahyd] / ˈmɔr təˌfaɪd /

adjective

humiliated, ashamed, or deeply embarrassed.

Sternly lectured by the principal in front of her friends, my daughter felt suitably mortified and hopefully will never do such a thing again.
Pathology. affected with gangrene or necrosis.

The removal of mortified tissue from wounds enables faster healing.

verb

the simple past tense and past participle of mortify.

Other Word Forms

mortifiedly adverb
unmortified adjective

Etymology

Origin of mortified

mortify ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

Explanation

To be mortified is to be extremely embarrassed. If your pants fell down in class, you'd be mortified. In science, mortified describes body tissue that's severely decayed. But the most common meaning of this word has to do with hurt feelings, not rotting flesh. You're mortified when you're so ashamed or embarrassed that you wish you could just shrivel up and die — kind of like mortified flesh, actually. Though people get embarrassed often, being mortified is a little more rare and a lot more severe. It means about the same as humiliated.

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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Backers confessed that they were mortified that they had introduced him to their friends.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 16, 2026

Radford was mortified, feeling like his preferences were being used in a proxy war between senior executives.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 28, 2026

The movie flopped and Perrine was so mortified by the film’s poor reception that she moved to Europe.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 23, 2026

"They were absolutely fantastic but I was mortified."

From BBC • Mar. 13, 2026

I had been mortified, then disappointed when he said he was only visiting for the summer from Seattle.

From "Keep It Together, Keiko Carter" by Debbi Michiko Florence

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023