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
- mortifiedly adverb
- unmortified adjective
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.
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
Davidson, an executive producer of the film, left midway through the ceremony and said in a statement he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning.”
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 12, 2026
In a statement on Monday, Davidson said he was "deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning".
From BBC • Feb. 24, 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
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
