mortified
Americanadjective
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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.
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Pathology. affected with gangrene or necrosis.
The removal of mortified tissue from wounds enables faster healing.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of mortified
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.
Vocabulary lists containing mortified
The Book Thief
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The Devil's Arithmetic
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Stargirl
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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.
Paul said he was "mortified" and, while understanding the need to keep everyone safe, felt there was a lack of "dignity, compassion and empathy".
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
Rolincik was assigned a slow French ballad and was mortified when the instructor said she was doing too much.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
“I’m mortified to say, however, I fell hard for this one.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
One of the women described to the jury how she had "froze" after the incident while the other said she had been "mortified".
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
I’m mortified by this, mortified that Theo could hear me and mortified even more by the idea that he could hear me doing something I wasn’t even aware I was doing.
From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
